


Pushing Against The Mountain

by TheAstronomer



Category: Taboo (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Related, F/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Regency, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2018-11-03 05:03:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10960248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAstronomer/pseuds/TheAstronomer
Summary: James Delaney and Lorna Bow may each have their own agendas in order to survive the many enemies in 19th century London but the challenge they represent to one another is too much to resist.  The Devil Delaney returns to London after many years absence and meets the step-mother he didn't know existed.Set during Series One of Taboo.No Zilpha in this story.





	1. Chapter 1

James Delaney and Lorna Bow regarded one another stealthily. She, covertly glancing at him where he slumped in the high-backed chair in the dim room, was trying to ascertain if he truly believed her claim on his deceased father as her husband. He, slanting looks at her above fingers steepled over the bridge of his nose, was deciding what possible use he may have for her. Agendas were apparent on each side, that much was true. 

They had met less than an hour previously, James with no idea of her existence, Lorna with only the vaguest notion of who her deceased husband’s son really was, beyond that he was presumed dead for many years and that the water-rat children of the Thames had concocted ridiculous rhymes about him. 

 _The London Cannibal._  

 _The Devil Delaney._  

 _Rich as Croesus._  

How quickly gossip spread through the twisted streets by the docks and out into the city.  It seemed London did not welcome its lost son with open arms. 

'I am Lorna Bow-Delaney,' she had proclaimed as the door to the once grand house opened, it windows obscured by semi-rotten planks of wood, vegetation strangling its gardens.  Her legs shook beneath her skirts.  

The man at the door stared at her for a long moment.  The man who was, to all intents and purposes, her step-son. 

'Delaney, is it? A long-lost relative sprung from the wood?' 

'Horace Delaney – your father – was my husband.' 

'Oh my father had many wives it seems, hm?  Similar to Bluebeard.'   

Lorna’s first impression of James Delaney was that of a man totally enfolded in himself and his own thought processes, utterly alone and self-possessed. As inward looking and solid as some rough native statue on a faraway island and just as unreachable. His eyes had widened briefly when he fixed his gaze on her face for the first time but then resumed their restless roam around the street behind her where she stood on the doorstep of the house. 

'I think he thought more of me than Bluebeard did of his wives, Mr Delaney.  Despite keeping me somewhat... hidden away.' 

'That is as well for you, madam.'

Lorna could see nothing of Horace in James Delaney's shuttered face - full lips hidden in a beard that covered a lean, tanned jaw, eyes she could not fathom the colour of and a singular hairstyle she had never seen on any man before; shorn skin-close at the sides, marginally longer on top above a furrowed, glowering brow. And he was grimy. Face, thickly muscled neck, hands - all ingrained. He wore dark unfashionable clothes which were designed to keep the elements from him and nothing more. 

Truly, Lorna had never encountered a person like him in her whole life, and as an actress she mixed in eccentric circles. He engendered an immediate reaction in her of...  _discomfort_ , she thought.  _Or challenge perhaps_. She would have to mull that over later.  But Lorna recognised curiosity when she saw it, and James Delaney was curious. 

'I have important information which you need to know...'  Lorna began. 

A sour-faced servant popped up behind James in the dark interior of the hall. 

'We have a visitor Brace.  Put on the kettle.  Let it never be said we don't know how to welcome relatives to Chamber House.'  There was a deep sarcasm in the words, and a voice which was rough and rasped as though from not being used often.  But James moved to one side, leaving a gap in the doorway he had been noticeably blocking. 

'Relatives?' snapped Brace, peering suspiciously at Lorna and making no move to in any way welcome her.  That Brace was a man dressed for outdoors, complete with hat and scarf, did not encourage Lorna that either physical or emotional warmth awaited her inside.   

'Come in, Ms. Bow,' said James. 

Drawing herself up and with a graceful inclination of her head, she stepped into Chamber House. 

'Mrs Delaney,' she said over her shoulder as she passed him. 

 

****** 

 

'Perhaps you may now explain what I need to know?' 

They stood in a once elegant drawing room.  

'Perhaps a glass of water first, if there is such a thing available?' 

Despite Lorna’s haughty display of pride and spirit at this, their initial meeting, she was terrified. If James had looked at her in the seconds immediately after he’d roughly ordered his sullen servant Brace to prepare a drink for her, he would have seen her whole body briefly slump, a dark shadow of fatigue and terror blow across her face. Just as fleetingly it was gone and Lorna’s spine snapped back upright, her brown eyes alert again and darting between James and Brace. She was an actress after all.  She felt like a trembling deer on the cusp of lashing out with sharp hooves or darting away to safety. 

In truth, they were both more like creatures than humans in those first moments of meeting - James with the guarded and hooded eyes of a bird of prey, revealing nothing but seeing everything. They were circling one another warily, animals in human form, the survival instinct sharpening their wits and senses to an almost painful degree. 

Brace stumped back into room and thrust a glass of water at Lorna, who accepted it, and sipping delicately, bought herself time.  A clock ticked quietly nearby and the man standing across from her waited. There was no invitation to sit. 

What James saw in Lorna was an apparent core of steel. He recognised those who had that mysterious strength- it was instinct in him to seek it out. He saw it in some of the men he had commanded at sea. They were the ones who turned against everything they knew, even their own nature, to do as he told them to do. To most this would appear to be weakness but James recognised the power in giving themselves over to something that they believed in, something which thrummed deeply in their being. This he saw in Lorna.  

Yet, he also saw the artifice in her; the curled auburn hair, the reddened lips, the ornate hat with nodding feather plume, the green dress she wore like a ship in full sail. Her face was brittle and he saw a flicker of desperation in her pride that made him smother a smile to himself.  

 _Oh,_ _I_ _kn_ _o_ _w her._   

He noted her pale gleaming skin, her dark eyes and lips stretched thin with anxiety, the deep line at one side of her mouth betraying a woman who enjoyed smiling, in normal circumstances. 

 _There’d be little call for that here_ , he thought. And he also mused:  _What_ _will I do with her?_  

He turned the notion over and over in his mind like a smooth pebble, feeling the weight and shape of it. 

And so, Lorna told James what he needed to know and Brace bristled indignantly as she staked her claim on the Delaney estate, patiently explaining that she had married Horace Delaney in Ireland and she was now, therefore, his widow. She presented the marriage certificate, hinted at her possession of other important documents and blatantly declared that half of the house they all stood in belonged to her. Each word she used was carefully selected and delivered imperiously with a half-smile. It was the performance of her life. Wisely, she decided to leave the Nootka issue for the time being. 

James received the information silently and with no reaction.  However, Lorna thought Brace may spontaneously combust with fury. He reminded her of a dog, a Jack Russell terrier perhaps, yapping at her on stiff little legs, straining at his leash to get to her. And Delaney held the leash of course. As Brace spluttered and spat at her, his face twisted with rage, Delaney fiercely yanked him back. 

‘Brace!’ he barked. 

Lorna started sharply at James' voice. Brace himself snapped his mouth shut instantly. ‘Prepare my mother’s room, this woman will be staying’. 

Brace stalked off, muttering. James watched him go with a grim smile. He pointed to a chair in the drawing room they were in. They had all been standing as this exchange had taken place.  

‘Sit’, he said gruffly, before adding quietly, ‘If you please.’  

James, in contrast to Brace, was the very picture of calm, only the barest flicker of interest crossing his face when she’d mentioned the ‘other documents’ she possessed. Although Lorna's sharp eyes hadn’t missed it.  Equally, it had not escaped her notice that she was to occupy his mother's old room and she stowed this nugget of information away to pore over later when the adrenaline had ceased coursing through her system. 

'Thank you,' she muttered. 

 Lorna stiffly sank into the chair he had indicated, her spine still rigid, clutching the large battered bag which contained her meagre belongings. Her eyes fluttered briefly shut as her body acknowledged the scant comfort of the hard chair. She was almost at the point of collapse in truth. She noticed that James had taken the seat facing hers across the room but sank low into it, his hands obscuring his face as he steepled his fingers over it, elbows propped on the arms of the ancient chair, legs spread wide before him. Silence in the room expanded as Lorna warily peered over at him. 

 ‘And what did you see in my father that made you agree to be his wife?’ he asked suddenly. 

Lorna heaved a deep sigh, she could barely form any coherent thoughts, let alone come up with something which was equal to her usual standards of half-lie embroidered with theatrical emotion. So she simply told him the truth. 

‘He made me feel safe’, she stated, rubbing her eyes which had taken on a bruised appearance. ‘And he wanted to make me happy and he was lonely’.  

She regretted her honest words as soon as they left her mouth. 

‘Hm.’ James rumbled, his face still hidden. ‘And what did my father see in you, Miss Bow, do you think? The actress and the old man?’ His voice did not change tone but she knew he was mocking her, testing her. 

‘You know I am an actress?’ She could not disguise the surprise in her voice. 

‘I know. And you will hear things about me... about this household, Miss Bow. You would do well to heed them.’ He rubbed the side of his head where a scar marred his hairline. 

‘If I hear that this house has not had a good clean for many a year, then I would certainly heed it,’ she snapped. ‘And as for you, I have already heard the... stories. Indeed, I am not sure if I am dealing with a man or a myth. But the facts of this situation are that I have a claim on Horace Delaney’s estate as his loved and esteemed wife!’ She faltered at that... had she over egged the pudding? A pink flush spread over her cheeks. Regardless, Lorna had had enough. She stood up, drawing desperately on the last reserves of her energy and acting ability. 

‘I would like to retire to my room now, Mr Delaney,’ she stated haughtily.  

He pointed silently to the stairs. As she began to climb them, his voice followed her up: ‘First room on the right’.  

James watched her go, he could see she was almost spent, every fibre of her straining to maintain the facade. He nodded to himself. In his mind, the smooth dark pebble was still ceaselessly turning. He’d recognised the honesty of her answer but also that she had been pressured into being candid with him in this way. 

He may have a use for her after all. 

 

*******

  

Later, Lorna woke suddenly in the sparse, dark room. She was sweating even though she only wore her tattered petticoat in bed. The bedclothes she slept under consisted of a rough woollen blanket which felt none too clean. She had seen no evidence of servants other than Brace, and she suspected his abilities as a housekeeper may be lacking to say the least. His ‘preparation’ of the room for her appeared to have consisted of throwing the blanket onto the bed and nothing more. A thick layer of dust gave the room a mausoleum-like air. Still, at least he had left a jug of water and a glass by the bed.  She drank some now, relishing the feel of it slipping down her parched throat, although this only served to awaken her hunger for food and the gnawing pain in her gut at its emptiness. Lorna lay on her back in the bed for a while, trying not to think or feel. Before she’d fallen asleep earlier her thoughts had drifted to James Delaney and the enigma he represented to her. 

 _My stepson!_  She had expected nothing less than to be hurled from the house, legitimate claim or not and had geared herself up for the fight. His restrained reaction to her news, which must have in fact represented a bombshell to him, confused her deeply.  

And why send her to his mother’s room? The house was large and could not lack other empty rooms. She prided herself on being able to read people quickly, deciphering their personalities, their urges and passions. She considered it the jewel in the crown of her actress’ toolkit as it enabled her to pick apart a character, mimic what gave them purpose and recreate it. But James represented a closed door to her - no, he was more than that - a distant tower squatting immovable on the horizon. She felt her interest, her frustration, pushing against the solid weight of him. The challenge she had identified almost from the first minute of meeting him. 

 But now, in the night, she was hungry, painfully so. She clenched her fists and ground her teeth as she lay in the uncomfortable bed.  

 _His mother’s bed. Had Brace hated that absent, unknown woman too?_   

Lorna needed food and vowed she would find it – she would seek out the kitchen and hope that the terrier servant would not be curled up asleep in a basket there with the real dog she had spotted earlier, a wraith-like shaggy grey hound with mournful eyes. 

 Lorna stole out into the corridor outside her room. It was long and revealed only blank closed doors, silence, threadbare carpets.  A house as closed off and secretive as its inhabitants. She paused, her feet bare, toes clenching on the floor boards, and listened again. Slowly, she became aware of a sound; faint but present. Her ears strained to identify it – was it human, or animal or something else entirely? There was a very dim light coming from the staircase that led up to the next floor –  _a luring, goblin light_ , thought Lorna and laughed quietly to herself. A snippet of verse popped into her head. 

  _We must not look at goblin men,_    
_We must not buy their fruits:_    
_Who knows upon what soil they fed_    
_Their hungry thirsty roots?_  

This had always been Lorna’s downfall, looking for the Art, the adventure, in every experience. She obsessively sought out Romance in its original sense of the word.  She took solace and strength from poetry, art, nature, the dark and light of it. This is what she believed propelled her up the stairs to the attic room which was James Delaney’s childhood room. 

The sound finally resolved itself into a human voice, deep and rhythmical with a strange, measured cadence to it.  Lorna moved towards the door of the room which was ajar. Her whole being felt thrilled and alive; she felt on the cusp of some great discovery.  If she could see her own face, she would have marvelled at how wide and bright her eyes were, how her lips were slightly parted. Lorna flattened herself against the wall, the sharp bones of her shoulder blades complaining at the pressure. She slid into the large room, never pausing to consider how reckless or dangerous her actions may be. When Lorna looked back at her behaviour afterwards, she realised that she must have known on some level that it was Delaney’s voice she had heard and which had drawn her in. 

 He was kneeling in front of the fireplace, his back to the darkened doorway which Lorna lurked near. He wore only a grubby white nightshirt, open at the front and partially fallen off his broad shoulders, revealing a good deal of his wide back and chest. Lorna could barely believe her eyes at the thick scrawls of ink that marked and crisscrossed his skin, everywhere that was visible. The patterns were unfamiliar to her, although she recognised them as obscure, exotic...  _Other._  Thick bands of black ink rippled over his bare muscled thighs as they flexed. He was also littered with scars that puckered his skin, some looking like healed lashes, others deeply impressed as though stamped into his flesh. Lorna clapped her hand over her mouth, fearing that her astonishment may become audible.  _What had_ ** _happened_** _to this man!_  

His voice rose and fell in an unknown language, guttural and deep. She sidled around the edge of the wall, wanting to see his face, and when she did, a jolt of fear, for the first time, ran through her nervous system. His face was daubed with some kind of white paint, smeared crudely over his cheekbones, his forehead, his eyelids. He was staring into the fire and his eyes were feral. He raised both hands towards his mouth, cradling a red powder, and blew sharply, blasting the particles into the flames. His voice intensified as he did this and briefly he became silent and expectant, his head cocked to the side as he peered at the flames which were burning temporarily and deeply blue. Then the energy seemed to suddenly leave him and his chin sagged onto his chest. The flames returned to their natural colour. Lorna was motionless and enthralled from her viewpoint in the shadows. 

‘I hear you,’ he announced abruptly in English. His head remained bowed. Lorna felt horror trickling coldly down her back and her legs threatened to buckle. She knew he was talking to her. ‘Ah! I can feel you there Lorna Bow.’ 

 His use of her name caused her eyes to close tightly, then snap open again, and her fists to curl over a handful of her inadequate clothing.  It felt like forever that she was trapped, motionless against the wall as James so very slowly raised his head from his chest and turned his livid face to her. All the Gothic tales that Lorna had feasted upon as a child and adolescent were made flesh in Delaney’s appearance. But Lorna was not entertained, nor thrilled. He stood, and his bulk blocked the firelight. 

 ‘Now you see me as I am,’ he suggested, holding his arms out wide. 'Look at me.' His voice was hard and flat. 

 At this, Lorna scrambled back into motion and fled the room, her heart threatening to burst from her chest. James walked slowly to the large circular window in the room which looked over the front aspect of the house and climbed onto its sill, tucking his legs up into the enclosing circle. He tipped his head back and rested it on the curved wall. He could feel the paint hardening and cracking on his face and fatigue seeped through his entire body. But he was also darkly exultant, a deep, burning excitement churning in the pit of his stomach. 

 He had summoned her to him. And it had worked. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a revised version of the first chapter I posted originally over a year ago. I am slowly working my way through the whole fic, editing (as of 20/6/18) and then will aim to finish writing it before Taboo series 2 starts filming in September (allegedly). There's a challenge for me, but I'm determined to finish this fic even if no-one is still reading it ha!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Events of the night before are ...completely ignored by the strange inhabitants of Chamber House. Lorna realises what sort of man James Delaney is.

Lorna descended the stairs tentatively the next morning. She was starting to wonder, in a rather prosaic fashion for her, if it had been a dream, that most clichéd of explanations offered for odd experiences. When she swept into the kitchen, the scene of cosy domesticity which confronted her was almost as weird and discordant in the surroundings as her odd encounter last night had been. Brace was presiding over the worn wooden kitchen table, wearing a filthy apron. Spread in front of him were a range of breakfast items: boiled eggs, toast, butter and a surprisingly delicate looking tea set. His lined face registered distaste at her arrival but he managed not to verbalise his wrath at her existence. 

Lorna nodded at the servant who bustled around the table in the dank kitchen as though he were a somewhat raddled housemaid.  She suppressed at smile at the thought of Brace in a maid's cap. 

James himself lounged in one of the chairs at the table, one arm thrown over the back of it. The mangy dog of the house had laid its head in his lap and was gazing balefully up at him. James' face was clean, he wore his dark, functional clothes again, only the very edge of his tattoos peeking above his shirt collar. Lorna’s eyes sought his out instantly. He stared back at her openly and she noted for the first time the strange mercurial colour of his eyes. Now they were a dark brackish green, one of them hooked with a scar around the delicate flesh that she hadn’t noticed before. 

‘Good morning, Miss Bow, did you sleep well?’ he enquired, just as though he was a gentleman and not some half wild revenant or chimera. Lorna regarded him steadily.  

 _So_ _this was how they were playing it_ , she thought calmly. She could easily do this, she lived and  _breathed_  such pretence. 

‘Tolerably well, Mr Delaney. I would appreciate some cleaner bedding for tonight, however,’ Here she glanced at Brace, whose jaw worked in annoyance. ‘And you should really call me Mrs Delaney....’ She tipped her head to the side in a bird-like gesture and the lopsided smile that cut the line into her cheek appeared briefly. 

‘Let us wait until the marriage documents are verified before we venture down that route, Miss Bow,’ he shot back at her. ‘Then perhaps I will call you Mother...?’ His own rare and grim smile appeared. 

 _Touché_ , thought Lorna.  _The beast Delaney has a sense of humour... of sorts._  

'That would be an interesting development, Mr Delaney,' Lorna returned. 

‘Tea?’ snapped Brace, shooting her a poisonous look. Lorna nodded graciously and he slopped some of the amber liquid into a cup.  Brace would not declare outright war yet, he would bide his time, like a snake – Lorna had met his kind many times before. 

Meanwhile, it was taking all of Lorna’s willpower not to fall on the food like a snarling wild animal, to rip it with her hands and teeth to shove it into her empty stomach. There was a slight tremor to her hand as she lifted the cup to her mouth. 

‘May I...?’ she gestured at the food. Brace grunted.  

She could not bring herself to look at James now, her hunger made her ashamed for some reason. It felt like a weakness and instinct told her not to show weakness to James, not after last night. Lorna handled the egg and toast delicately with deft fingers. James also picked up an egg, swiftly shelled it and pushed it whole past his full lips. Lorna’s eyes flickered over his face then slid off again.  _What a strange tableau we must depict_ , she mused. This was a household where secrets and lies were currency, that much was becoming clear to Lorna from the murk of intention.  

And James thought:  _Ah, she is almost entirely artifice_. Yet he could see the vulnerability which co-existed in her. Her prissy manners and stilted speech belied what he surmised she really was: a hardened and desperate survivor and the consummate actress. Her carapace of decorum did not fool him. He watched the pale column of her throat move as she ate, his fingers flexing convulsively around his cup. Trussed up again in what was obviously her best dress, her hair pinioned up and lips reddened, he thought back to her appearance in his room last night. 

When her delicate collar bones jutted out from her slight frame like thin rabbit bones. When her hair hung around her startled white face and her eyes registered horror.  When she came to him as he meant her to. 

He allowed himself to partially acknowledge his desire for her as it flared briefly, then briskly snapped that area of his mind shut. That was not the primary reason for the test of his ... abilities with her. He needed to know if she had both strength and susceptibility and she had proven she did. He wondered how the first meeting between her and his father had played out. Had she sinuously wound her way into his life, one skilful eye on his fine clothing and money, or had she simply opened herself up to him with that bewildering, unexpected honesty?  

 _Stupid, fucking mad old man!_   

But something about her chimed within him – a deep, darkly booming bell. He glanced at her again across the table, then stood abruptly, sending the dog who had sneaked onto his knee skittering across the floor. 

‘I will be out on business today,’ he announced. ‘Brace, ensure Miss Bow’s room is arranged more to her taste.’ Brace thumped the teapot down on the table in reply. 

James shrugged into a dark greatcoat and pulled on a tall black hat, casting his eyes into deep shadow.  _What a strange,_ _forboding_ _figure he cuts_! Lorna understood why the peculiar rumours and stories about him had sprouted and taken root along the banks of the Thames and in the twisting, begrimed streets of London. The thought passed through her mind again:  _What has happened to this man_? 

‘Miss Bow, I will have your marriage certificate now. My lawyer Mr Thoyt will attempt to ascertain its provenance. That may take some time. I will take counsel from him on how we proceed from here.’ He held his gloved hand out, inclined his head towards her and waited. Lorna frowned - he appeared to  _know_  she carried the document on her person. Flustered, she lifted the skirts of her dress, as discretely as possible under his insistent stare, and pulled the scrolled paper from her stocking. 

‘It is a copy!’ she called wildly after him as the door crashed shut behind him. ‘So destroying it will achieve nothing _!’_

 _My God, am I infected with his madness?_  

Why was she still here after the utterly bemusing and ghastly experience of the previous night? However she knew the answer to that – because she had nowhere else to go. She had been sleeping in the theatre where she was performing. She was having to repel the odious advances of the theatre owner almost nightly now and barricading herself in a dressing room. She already had a reputation as that rarest of beasts – an actress who was  **not**  also a whore. But this did not earn her respect, only scorn and distrust from other actresses and harassment from the Madam who set up trysts between actresses and the abhorrent, grasping gentry of London.  

The situation with Horace had been different … complicated. They had married 2 years ago but he had abandoned her after 4 months in Dublin. With hindsight, she realised his madness had already started to take hold. He had talked obsessively of his son who was missing, presumed dead.. _.Ugh, these deranged Delaney men!_  

Lorna decided that she would spend her day transporting the last of her belongings from the theatre on Drury Lane to the grim house perched on the edge of the Thames that she now apparently resided in. She had made a commitment in her own mind to seeing the thing with the insane Delaney family through. Implacable resistance was a quality that had got her through many an awkward situation in her life. She feared she would have to shake out  _that_  particular cloak and wear it permanently around Brace. His suspicious face turned to her from the stove where he was stirring a pot of stew, quite the housewife. 

‘Summon me a carriage will you, Brace. I am returning to Drury Lane...’ His face lit up grotesquely. ‘To fetch the rest of my belongings...’ she continued, her voice a lazy drawl, greatly enjoying his reaction. 

‘You will not get a penny from him you know! And if I could, I would kick you into the street, where you belong!’ he hissed at her. Lorna raised her eyebrows at him, affecting shock at his words. The sword had been drawn it seemed. 

‘I am not sure a servant should speak to his mistress in such a way... and you are my servant as well as his. God knows, this abominable house is crying out for a mistress, is it not Brace? You and he have obviously not realised what a sty it is. Quite the pair of crusty old bachelors, it seems.'

And so the rest of her exchanges went with Brace: they fired shots at each other across the No-Man’s-Land of the house’s unkempt interior all day but despite this she realised that the sour-faced servant  _was_  actually doing as she told him. He even heaved a case of her books up to her room when she returned in the carriage with it. She had no idea where he got his strength from, for although he was wiry he appeared aged. He peered with disgust at her canary, handling the cage as though it was infected with pox and muttering ‘What the hell's this bloody thing..’  

Clean bedding appeared in her room, there was an attempt to swipe the worst of the dust off the surfaces and kindling was laid in the grate of the fireplace. Lorna began to think of him as a sort of familiar to James rather than a dog, as witches had cats as their familiars. There was certainly more than a touch of the supernatural about James Delaney.   

By the evening Lorna was in her room, unpacking her books in front of the fire which Brace had set for her when she heard the great door of the house crash shut below. 

‘Brace! BRACE!’ reverberated James' rough voice. Lorna swiftly arranged herself on a chair with one of her books in hand, affecting a casual, relaxed air. She had an inkling that James would visit her room shortly and felt the strange mixture of fear and excitement that she experienced before she took to the stage, her chest tightening. She heard the men's voices rumbling in the rooms below. Mostly Brace, complaining no doubt. Then heavy footsteps on stairs and James was there in the doorway, still in coat and thick boots. 

‘My servant would like to shoot you in the face,’ he stated baldly. ‘And throttle your canary.’ His eyes drifted over the room towards the cage. 

‘ _Our_  servant. Have you had a productive day Mr Delaney?’ She looked at him expectantly over the top of her book. 

‘Hm. You have made yourself at home, yes?’ He did not wait for her to reply. ‘You have a trunk. With papers in it belonging to my father. I want it.’ 

 _Ah now we have it,_  thought Lorna.

She knew it would not be long before he made his demand. He was nothing if not direct and clear in his requirements. And she did feel the inexorable pull, through his spare, precise words and his still gaze, to capitulate to him. She stood up from her chair in front of the fire and stretched luxuriantly. Should she poke the bear a little? 

‘I’m not sure, Mr Delaney, what you would want with love letters from your father to me.’

She placed one hand on the back of the chair and gazed at the ceiling with half closed eyes.

‘I can still remember so many of his words...  _Lorna, you and I are forever connected, I feel you see into my very soul. I wish we could start our lives together again in the sun-kissed lands where people are reborn as elements of_ _Nature.._ _._ _’_  

She fixed her eyes on Delaney once more. His face was stone. 

‘I cannot imagine that the old man was capable of consummating the marriage with you.’ He was very still. ‘And any common actress may memorise the tawdry prose of a madman.’

Lorna was stung at this. James saw the hurt flare in her eyes, her loss of control.  _Could she actually have believed the words_? James frowned at the idea. But then she dealt her blow back. 

‘I wonder if we, Horace and I, may have made our new lives in Nootka. What do you think?’ 

Instantly, James was in front of her. He crowded the dark bulk of his body into her personal space and she instinctively backed towards the wall. Lorna felt panic rise, visions of his manifestation the night before overwhelming her. She could smell the essence of London itself emanating from the coat he wore: dank, smoky, and earthy. Her backbone finally flattened against the wall. James placed his hands on the faded wallpaper at either side of her head and brought his mouth down to her ear. 

‘You are incredibly foolish if you believe you can play with me. I think you know what I am.’ 

His breath was warm on her ear, his voice dark. The buttons of his coat pressed painfully into her breast as he leaned into her. Lorna could think nothing, only feel the claustrophobia of his hard body, the sudden intimate breach of her space. She was now nothing more than a collection of confused nerve endings, her body helplessly reacting to the onslaught from his. James' proximity engulfed her entirely. 

‘If you know about Nootka, then you know there are papers relating to it.’ He pulled back and stared angrily into her eyes. His voice was low and steady. ‘I want them. You will bring them.’  

He grasped her wrist tightly and started to lead her out of the room.  

‘But for now you will come and sit with me in the parlour, drink wine, and listen to how I passed my day, like any good mother would do for her son, hm?’ 

On the way towards the doorway he leaned down to the bird cage and flicked its door open. ‘I hate to see these things caged.’ The small bright yellow bird fluttered out onto the tabletop but then merely hunched there miserably, unsure of what to do with its freedom. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter edited and revised 20/6/18


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here comes the first Mrs Delaney.

Chapter 3

In the parlour, Lorna sank into a chair and tried to stop shaking. Coherent thoughts were slowly attempting to form in her mind again. James had been seriously rattled by the idea that she knew about Nootka. It was clearly incredibly valuable to him. His voice had barely raised but never had she been more aware of the sheer power of his intention that others simply do as he asked them. Except it was not an asking, it was a compulsion.

 

She watched him as he stood with his back to her and poured wine into two glasses. She could still feel his thighs pressed against hers, her hips. Lorna furiously pushed the sensations away. She was simply not equipped yet to examine what he, what his body and his relentless will, made her feel. She did not fully comprehend except that it made her head hurt. She hated the weakness he winnowed out of her, the constant testing of the absolute boundaries of her toleration. But still her curiosity in him dragged her back and back into his orbit.

 

However now, for once, Lorna thought it wise to concentrate on practical matters. _Just have the drink and go to bed. You have a canary to catch_.

 

James held a glass out to her and nodded as she took it from him with a muttered thanks. He knew he had almost lost control of himself in her room and his fury and want for her had leaked out. He’d dropped her wrist from his grip as soon as they’d left her room and felt the delirium subside from his brain, the sweat that had sprung out on his forehead was slowly drying. His own heart had clamoured in his chest when he’d felt her madly flickering pulse against his fingers. He had not bargained for her mention of Nootka, and it had shaken him, hugely. He shucked off the coat he was still wearing then pulled off his heavy boots, hurling them towards the hallway. Hunched in the chair, he dragged a hand over his face and threw the glass of wine back into his throat.

 

‘My lawyer suggests we have no contact with each other while this...situation... is resolved,’ James said quietly. A clock ticked softly in the corner of the room and Lorna sipped the wine, buying herself time before she answered him.

 

‘I.. I have nowhere..’

‘To go?’ he finished. ‘Yes.’

She felt ashamed, flayed raw by her vulnerable position. Why must she always be on the back foot with him?

‘I will not throw you out. That would be death for you.’ _Why should I care about causing her death after the countless others I have slain_? ‘But you must know that I am a dangerous man to be around. I have _no pity_ for those who work against me.’ He pronounced the words slowly. ‘There are also other very bad men who want to kill me. And Nootka is the reason. Your..ah, association, with this fucking family puts you in grave danger.’

 

He lapsed into silence. This was the longest Lorna had heard him talk, apart from his unintelligible incantations the previous night. Her mind was churning, she realised he was showing her a kindness, of sorts, by letting her stay. A kindness for him, a man who she suspected had rarely received or indeed known how to give kindness. A very damaged man. By degrees she was starting to understand him. A little.

 

James poured himself another glass of wine and again threw it back. And then he told her more. The whole sordid tale of the machinations of the King, the East India Company, the Americans. The balancing act he was undertaking to keep himself alive and in possession of that thin strip of land so many thousands of miles away which was the trading gateway to the endless treasures of the East. His will and the protection it afforded him. And her, Lorna, who was ‘a weakness’. Lorna listened silently, his spare, concise use of words in the telling rendering it even more incredible that he had survived, jostled between those great warring behemoths. She realised her hand had drifted up to cover her mouth as the knowledge of the sheer danger they were both in hit her. James witnessed her dawning comprehension and felt a dull unfamiliar ache of pity towards her. He repressed the urge to tell her she would not die, but he could not truthfully offer that false comfort. He also realised that telling her, having someone other than Brace to talk to had released something in him, a modicum of the immense pressure he was under. Her face was laid bare to him now as she processed what he’d told her. He ran his eyes over her furrowed brow, the downturn of her mouth. _I am a poison to people_.

 

‘I..I need some time. To think about this,’ she stammered. Her hands plucked at her dress. But why had he told her? To scare her off?

‘I need the paperwork you have which relates to Nootka.’

‘I will get it. But I need to sleep now Mr Delaney.’

 

He merely grunted as she stood up. His words had run out. She looked at him before she left, his profile illuminated by firelight, eyes turned away from her now, away from everything. As Lorna left the room, James vowed to think of nothing except finishing the bottle of wine and starting on the brandy.

 

* * *

  _He felt the cold dark water close over his head. It was a slow, tortuous drawing down of his body, his mind, into the green-tinged depths that stretched fathoms below. He felt the suffocating weight of it press in on him from all angles. And then she was there, arms like tendrils snaking around his torso, a flurry of wet dragging black feathers and livid white face. And oh God, he wanted to drift down with her but he desperately wanted to breathe, to live. And he wanted to kick free from her and push up but he owed her, them, his last breath. She meant him no harm. She meant him no harm_.

* * *

 

For the second time since her installation in the Delaney house, Lorna awoke with a start in the hard bed. She had struggled to get to sleep despite deep physical tiredness. And once again her last thoughts had been James and his chaotic, violent world that she felt she was now irrevocably connected to. She threw back the blanket on her bed – she had come to a decision.  She intended to take the Nootka document down and leave it on the kitchen table where he would find it in the morning. She felt a strange relief at the thought of expelling the tainted bloody thing from her vicinity. She took the thickly scrolled paper from the trunk in her room and headed down to the kitchen, padding down the staircase in the silent house. But in the kitchen, where a single candle burned, James was slumped over the table. He twitched and groaned deeply in his sleep. An empty brandy bottle rolled on the table next to him. Lorna shook his shoulder hard.

‘Mr Delaney!’ His eyes shot open. ‘Mr Delaney, go to bed!’

His face was wild for a few seconds, eyes wide and unfocused.

‘She does not mean me harm..,’ he slurred. To Lorna's horror, he slid out of the chair onto his knees in front of her and she felt his hands grip her hips. His fingers dug into the soft flesh fiercely and he pushed his face into her yielding stomach. He dragged his lips roughly over the taut fabric of her nightgown and Lorna felt a sharp stab of desire spear through her. He muttered into her shaking body but she couldn’t decipher his harsh words. She was frozen, her arms stretched out before her. And then slowly her hands drifted down to his head and she slid her fingers through his hair, down to the back of his warm thick neck. She felt a deep shudder pass through his body and his own hands skimmed up to her waist, his thumbs brushing the underside of her breasts. Her breath deepened and she realised it felt like she was holding some great tamed wild animal under her hands. She felt the falling sensation that intense lust created in her, she was teetering on the precipice of her own body and his pressed against her. He stood up and slowly backed her towards the wall. The beats of darkness and her own pulse rushed in her ears and she felt her body start to open to him.  She could only partly make out his eyes in the gloom and he was silent again now. Lorna was forcefully reminded of the earlier occurrence when he had loomed over her and at that, she awoke from her desire induced trance.

‘You are drunk, Mr Delaney! I suggest you go to bed.’  She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed.

And then she ran, like a deer.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a slow burner. But I'm getting there!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Lorna take the leap.

Chapter 4

  
James had become aware of the slow moving river of his lust for Lorna only by degrees. It ran under the very crust of his comprehension and caused him to react to her physically in ways he was only partially conscious of: the way his body automatically turned to hers in a room, how his hearing was tuned to her voice wherever she was in the house, how his eyes were drawn to her mouth, her neck, her straight back, endlessly. He could not fully fathom how she had slipped under his veneer and why. He had fucked many women more beautiful than her, more sophisticated and accomplished than her. It was her honesty and her striving for survival, for _life,_ which chimed in him and made some latent desire flare into vibrant existence. But he also knew that he strained away from it’s inexorable grip on him constantly and that it exhausted him to do so. He scorned it, the sheer _weakness_ of his attraction to her, it made him angry at himself and even more sullen with her. He had **not** planned for it and deviating from his plans always made him uneasy...

  
Over the next few days in the house, they sidestepped around each other, their stilted and formal interactions followed by the shrewd eyes of Brace. Until suddenly Lorna told James of her plan to return to the stage, to fulfil a contractual obligation, she claimed. He had observed her boredom and frustration at being cooped up in the musty house all day: bickering with Brace, making disastrous attempts at cooking, demanding new curtains, flowers, that an outraged Brace help her in removing the shabby shutters from the myriad windows (this was angrily refused of course). An endless list of needs and wants that both James and Brace lost track of and culminated in her announcement of attendance as the lead actress in a performance the next evening.

  
‘You will not perform’, stated James simply. ‘They know your connection to me now. It will play straight into their hands. Do not be a fool.’  
_‘They?_!’ she spat. Boredom at her lack of occupation and confusion at James' erratic behaviour made her reckless. ‘You!  _You_  are able to come and go as you please at all hours of the day or night, never giving me any kind of insight as to your intent or plans and I must be trapped in this abominable building with a man who hates me..’ Here she thrust a finger towards the kitchen where Brace lurked. _‘Another_ man who hates me, should I say. Playing housekeeper in this crumbling pigsty. I _will_ perform. My life is not worth living without it.’ _Ever the actress_.

So this was how James found himself firing a shot from his gun over the altercation between Lorna and the venerable Duke of Richmond the following evening. James had watched in the background, where he had been all evening, as the Duke had attempted to physically coerce Lorna into whoredom via a duplicitous and sly madam under payment of the Crown. And Lorna's reply had been to vigorously apply her hatpin to his juddering jowls, swiftly followed by it piercing his mountainous abdomen. His enraged roars had rung out in the murky side street where Lorna had been lured after the performance and where the exchange had taken place.

  
‘You will hang for this you..you WHORE! I am the fucking Duke of Richmond!’ His fat hands grasped his own neck and bloated stomach as he staggered back to his carriage but James' practised eye recognised the wounds were not fatal. As he led the white-faced and shaking Lorna away he knew what was to come next. The iron forge of his mind had already fired up in anticipation.

  
The carriage journey back to the house had been in silence, punctuated only by the gradual subsiding of Lorna's harsh breathing. James spent the journey cautiously glancing out of the window, ascertaining if they were followed or not. In the parlour, he poured her a brandy. She merely stood, clutching the glass, motionless.

  
‘Drink,’ he said. ‘They will be coming for you soon. The Crown's men. They will threaten you with hanging unless you sign their document.’

  
Lorna sparked into life at that.

  
‘Hang me?!’ She swallowed the brandy, coughed and wiped her mouth. ‘For what?! Defending my honour?’

  
‘This was part of their plan. They will take you to Newgate. You must hold out. You will hold out. Look at me.’ His burning eyes sought hers and she turned to him slowly with a dawning realisation. There was already a hammering at the great front door. James dragged her further into the house, away from the door which was threatening to break under their battering.

‘These men are here to take you. I will contact the East India Company and they will free you. I will be with you when you are inside and you will know it. Hold out.’ It seemed to Lorna that his urgent voice came to her from a great distance. He held her in front of him, looked unfaltering into her eyes as though he meant to imbibe her with his own will. 

  
The dozen men clad in the uniform of the Crown invaded the house and quickly located Lorna and James where they faced one another in the kitchen. His hand was clutching her upper arm ... there would be bruises there later from it.

 

* * *

 

Lorna was roughly bundled into a small dank room. She had been brutally stripped of her dress by a gaoler who had leered over her as she shivered in her petticoats.

  
‘Pretty one ain't you?’ he sneered. ‘Actress eh? They'll love you in here.’

  
Lorna did not react. She behaved as though he was not there, her eyes avoiding his, even as he shackled her wrists together.

  
He gave a nasty giggle and pushed her down the corridor, past other prisoners who hissed and whispered at her, and shoved her into the room where she was now located. It contained a table, with a quantity of papers stacked neatly on it, a quill pen and ink pot. Next to it stood a small, fair-haired older man who exuded malice and an odd sense of repressed malevolent humour, as though he would burst into unpleasant laughter at any moment. His round eyes were a dirty non-colour that glittered as they raked over her body.

  
‘Mrs Delaney. I am Solomon Coop, private secretary to the Prince Regent.’  
Lorna said nothing, kept her chin up as she looked back at him.  
‘I have a terribly simple proposition for you...’ He indicated the desk where several documents lay. He had a high cultured voice that matched his fine clothing. ‘You will sign these papers which seek to contest the will of Horace Delaney on the grounds of his insanity and when that is passed, as it shall be, you shall then turn over your share of Nootka Sound to the Crown. You can sign that today too. And off you will go, a thousand pounds richer.'  He spread his hands and smiled broadly. 'And what's the _alternative_ offer you say? Well, that is to hang for attempted murder. After a spell in the cells with a number of very desperate men.’

  
He lightly drew his finger along her bare shoulder and Lorna shuddered and reared away from him.  
‘I have been told ... to await a better offer,’ she managed to say, her mind brimming with terror. ‘James said...’  
Mr Coop’s eyes widened.  
‘Oh James is it?  _James_. So soon. Ha, I see.’ He pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Well, I shall have to think of a way to change your mind over the course of the next few hours.’

  
_Yes, James_ , Lorna thought. _James. James. I am holding out_. She repeated his name desperately in her head like a litany and with each repetition she felt that place in her core which was defiled by Coop's ugly probing eyes harden off to him. She sent herself, her mind, out of that room and away, through the streets to the dark solid house where James was. She _invoked_ him and he was there waiting for her. And although he was not with her as he had said, she sought _him_ out. Her shivering, semi-naked and horribly vulnerable body may have been in that foetid room with evil men who meant her harm, but she, **she** was not there.

She turned her eyes up to a crack on the ceiling of the cell as Coop began to roughly pull the ribbons of her undergarments out of their lacings.

  
But then she was brought back to her terrible reality by a scuffle of footsteps and voices within the room and she turned her eyes away from the ceiling and onto the weaselly, pallid face of a man who she had not seen before but who was telling her to dress and leave, pushing her dress into her arms. The men in uniform behind him were Company men though, she knew that much and she realised James had done as he said. She had been freed.

 

As Lorna stumbled out of the gate of the jail, she took one deep steadying breath, leaning briefly on the wall before she saw the spry figure of Brace emerge from a carriage nearby. She was not about to admit she was relieved to see him, nor that she was hurt and disappointed that his face still betrayed his distrust of her.

  
‘I can find my own carriage’ she retorted sharply.  
‘Mr Delaney instructed me to take you home,’ he muttered sullenly.  
‘Home? He said _home_?’  
'I don’t quite recall, Miss Bow. Please get into the carriage.’

 

* * *

 

  
Lorna poured herself a brandy. It had only been a few short hours since she had been here with James. Yet she felt utterly changed. _Where was he now, the bastard?_ The brandy burned its way down to her stomach. She threw the glass into the fireplace where it shattered satisfyingly. She wanted him to be here.

  
In her bedroom she stood at the window and stared down into the street, slowly being lit as dawn filtered through. A figure gradually emerged at the far end of the street, advancing steadily towards the house. Lorna quickly recognised it as James the purposeful gait and dark heavy clothes _. No, I will not look away,_ she thought grimly as he stopped, glanced briefly at her in the window, his expression unreadable.

She waited for his footsteps on the stairs and they came quickly.

  
‘Are you alright?’ He came into room slowly, almost tentatively. Lorna sensed her advantage.

  
‘I was **not** a weakness.’ Her voice was high and he saw she was stretched so thinly that a wrong word would snap her. Her face was pale and her eyes glassy.

  
‘You were not,’ he agreed, taking off his coat and hat and sitting heavily in a chair. Lorna's eyes followed his movements. But she did not look at his face. They both could only let their eyes slip away from one another, never making full contact. And they both felt the heaviness of the contract that now existed between them.

  
‘In the jail, I called you James. I think that surprised them the most. It certainly surprised me.’

  
There were beats of silence.

  
‘Come here...’ James said finally.

  
She stood uncertainly in the permanent dim half-light of the room, faltering and unsure of his motives and her own reactions.

  
‘Lorna...come to me.’

  
His voice was dark and low and it made her finally look into his eyes where his motive was clear in the enlarged pupils and the intensity of his expression, the tension in his jaw.. Although his position in the chair had not altered, there was an increased, alert energy in the way he held himself and she felt the power of his attention fully focused on her. It was this that drew her down to him to kneel between his knees, her hands resting on his powerful thighs, so that when he placed his hand on the base of her skull and pulled her face up to his, she came to him easily. And instead of James' advance on her reminding her of that small filthy room in Newgate Prison and the man there with eyes like dirty marbles, it was a balm to her.

  
That first soft press of James' lips against Lorna's was electrifying to her, causing her body to writhe briefly against his while he marvelled at her response. So when he finally opened his mouth against Lorna's and pushed his tongue gently to hers, her body surged up against his torso and she fastened her hands around his neck, raking her fingers down the warm nape. As the kiss deepened, he urged her up onto his lap with firm hands where she straddled him, her bare legs under her dress scratched by the rough material of his breeches. James' hands grasped the fragile shards of her shoulder blades through her dress, before dragging his thumbs down her spine. She felt his cock swelling against the underside of her soft thigh and she shifted restlessly against him.

  
‘Be still,’ he murmured but there was a command in the low voice. Lorna stilled herself and he began to remove her dress, sliding the shoulders off and pulling the top half of the garment down entirely to her waist, leaving only her petticoat, her hardened nipples pushing against the thin material. He clenched his fists, longing to run his fingertips over them but knowing it was not quite yet the right time. He allowed himself to briefly rub his lips over her small breasts, producing a quiet moan from her.

  
‘Stand up.’

  
She did so and he realised she had not yet uttered a single word. And despite the quietly issued orders he made of her, and her compliance, he searched her face for signs it was too much for her. He saw the fright and lust and entreaty in her eyes and cursed his own hard, secretive nature which he knew had contributed to that fear in her. He wanted to show her how he could honour her bravery and her loyalty to him despite his inflexibility, the derangement that drove him and the chaos around him. But he needed to know she gave herself willingly.

  
‘Take it off. Take all of it off.’

  
And he sat in the chair and watched her with his patience ticking slowly away with each of her careful movements. Her dress pooled at her feet and then the petticoat was slowly removed and finally her slender, pale form shimmered before him, darkness visible only at the juncture of her thighs and the peaks of her breasts. Now his cock strained painfully against the material that encased it. He drew her back into the v of his legs and slid his hands up the shivering planes of her warm abdomen, watching the muscles clench, running his rough thumb over a freckle that nestled just below her left breast.

  
‘Do you want this?’

  
‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘Yes.’

  
He let his eyes close briefly, deciding where to put his hands, his mouth next on her. It had been a long time since he had been required to think of a woman’s pleasure in this way and he felt his desire to please her coil in his own stomach. He drew her dark nipple into his mouth, running his tongue around the hard nub. As her back arched at his touch it pushed her breast against his nose and her scent, vaguely salty, filled his nostrils. He grunted softly and palmed her other breast, circling the nipple with his thumb. His other hand trailed down the long expanse of her spine and back up again and this movement and the feel of her in his mouth was like a meditation to him. He became aware of her voice speaking quietly.

  
‘I want to see you too.’

  
So now it was his turn to undress and Lorna watched him do it with his characteristic spare and precise movements until his hard, marked body was revealed to her and it was her turn to press her hands and fingers to areas that drew her, the tattoos and scars. She did not ask about them, that was for another time.

  
James sat back in the chair and she resumed her position straddling him, the sensation of skin against skin now painfully heightened. Placing his hand on her lower back he titled her pelvis forward, allowing him better access to her wet centre. Slowly pulling his finger over her clit he held her down on his thighs as she jerked and gasped. As he did this, he trailed his tongue firmly up the taut sinew of her neck, ending with a bite of her ear lobe. His finger continued its slow steady grind over her clit only picking up pace when she breathed ‘More’ into his ear. So he gave her more, nudging her thighs wider, applying two fingers to her slick nub, and not slowing until her shaking legs and tensed thigh muscles told her she was close to the edge of her orgasm. And when she did tip over the edge, his eyes could see nothing but her face as the deep flush spread over it. Her eyes rolled up, lips parted and a long low moan was drawn from her throat. His erection pressed painfully between them as she slumped momentarily against him. He held her there, the fingers of one hand still pressed into her hip.

  
‘I need to...’ he began.  
‘Yes,’ she said again simply.

  
And on the bed he fucked her, pushed her back onto it and drove himself into her hard. With every grinding, dense thrust into her he realised this was always going to happen between them and the feel of her hips moving in time with him and her body twisting beneath him, felt natural and desperate and dark all at the same time. His mind was a confused flurry of sensations, disjointed thoughts and he felt he was slipping away from himself and fully into the woman whose eyes were locked onto his. And when his own orgasm approached, he felt it pulsing deeply inside her and he groaned hoarsely as he spilled himself into her. When they lay panting together afterwards and she gently placed the back of her hand over his mouth, he licked her knuckle, and their eyes met. Things had changed irrevocably and they both knew it.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Basically a short chapter of smut.

Lorna lay in the half light and listened to his breath starting to even out. He was stretched out on his back next to her on the narrow bed and she, partially turned to him, observed his profile. That closed, secretive face, so mysterious to her, yet starting to become so familiar. His eyes were open but he stared at the ceiling, only his slow blinks betraying his consciousness, and his thoughts were as distant to her as the unfathomable universe. She studied the strange scar that scored deeply across the delicate skin around his eye. They were both naked, sweat cooling on their bodies. Lorna's leg was draped over his thick, tattooed thigh, her white underexposed skin a sharp contrast to his marked, dark pelt. On her upper arm were bruises shaped like fingertips as she had predicted. A pulse was beating in his throat and she placed her index finger on it, desperate to touch him again but wary of where and how. He expelled a deep breath and his tongue passed over his lips. His eyes slid sideways towards her and she felt the strange power of his attention on her again, complicated and forceful. A shiver contracted down her body as he shifted heavily to face her and pulled her leg up to hitch over his hip. They faced one another, partially entwined and the almost oppressive feeling of their mutual lust rose up again between them.

  
‘What is going to happen, James? I am scared,’ she stated simply. Her lips were close to his and she brought a hand up to his face. Her ordeal in Newgate Prison was still all too fresh and Lorna could no longer simply pretend that she, they, were not in serious danger. She realised how much faith she must place in him and the part of her that had survived so long with no trust in any other human must bend to his will. He was silent for long seconds, although his hand began a languid stroking of her back, fingers nudging along her spine.

  
‘I have a plan. It depends upon people doing exactly as I say, when I say. That is all I can tell you. There will be a place for you, should you wish.’  
‘I have little choice.’ She frowned and he pressed a finger to the line between her brows as if to smooth it away. _Was she just part of his damned ‘company’? To be absorbed and used to suit his plans_? ‘But I will agree to your proposition.’

  
And then there was a sudden surge of him against her, flipping her onto her back and pressing her down as his mouth found her ear and whispered ‘You will not regret it Lorna.’ The sheer heft of his body threatened to overwhelm her, despite him propping himself up on elbows above her. Her thighs were pulled around his waist and she felt the slickness between her legs become fully exposed again at this movement. His eyes bored into hers, the pupils enlarged, black with lust, and she knew her own eyes would reflect that same dark craving.

  
‘I want to fuck you again.’

  
His stark language sent another surge of desire through her nervous system which was already stretched to capacity. She placed her middle finger on his bottom lip and dipped the tip into his warm mouth. His tongue drew the finger into his mouth where he sucked it with a scrape of teeth.

  
‘Yes James. I want you to.' she said. Because they both knew that while they were in, and on, and with each other’s bodies, the rest of their wicked, desperate and unpredictable world would be held at bay for a while longer. So when she reached down between them and grasped his warm, hard length in her hand, the guttural groan it drew from him made her smile as she drew her thumb over the engorged tip of his cock.

  
‘I.. I have never touched a man in this way before.’ And she hadn’t, previous sexual encounters had been rushed, unhappy encounters. She also had not told him that no man had even seen her naked. He lifted his head from where it was bowed onto her shoulder.

  
‘What you are doing feels good ...’ he ground out. She resumed her deep strokes of his cock enjoying his tense shudders at her touch. He ran his tongue along her jaw, nipping at the juncture of ear lobe and neck and Lorna gasped, her grasp on him loosening. He took the opportunity at this to pull her up with him as he kneeled on the bed and held her in front of him.

  
‘I want to taste you Lorna.’

  
Lorna flushed deeply at this but she could not wait to feel his tongue in her. And she lowered herself back to the bed and let her legs fall open for him. He dropped himself down to the floor by the bed and slowly dragged her towards the edge by her hips. He ran his hands along her legs and pushed her thighs wider apart, his breath becoming harsher at the sight of her, open for him and propped up on elbows, eyes wide, to watch his next move. Lorna’s own breath came in short gasps as he placed one hand on her stomach and the other held her folds open so his tongue could find her most sensitive spot – his tongue laved the whole area and then circled her clit deftly as his beard grazed her inner thighs. As he set a rhythm drawing his tongue firmly across and around her clit, Lorna fell back to the bed with her arm held across her eyes, partly ashamed at the whines that his tongue and lips were drawing out from her throat but ultimately becoming lost in the intense sensation of it. And she could not help her fingers from rolling and pinching her own nipples as she felt her orgasm start to build. Now both of his hands were pressed against her inner thighs, urging her wider as he felt the spasms begin to roll over her abdomen and flutter across his tongue as he stroked her deeper and harder with it. As she came, back arched on the bed, he crawled up her body to thrust his cock deep into her and latch his mouth onto hers. There was a hard probing twist of tongue against tongue and Lorna’s hands scrabbled at the thick skin of his neck as he moved in her and on her, fucking her hard back into the bed. And his deep grunts when he tore his mouth away from hers to press his bared teeth on her shoulder made her wrap her legs tighter around his waist and pull him greedily in and in again to her. She felt she would never get enough of this man inside her and what he made her body do. James felt the delirium of his approaching orgasm as his thrusts became erratic, his hips grinding against hers. And when he came, groaning roughly against her shoulder all he knew was the feel of the woman he was buried inside and whose legs were clamped around his waist, her hands pulling his hair.

  
For the second time they lay together on the bed after he slid out of her and then pulled her into his side, one arm tightly around her, hand warmly cupping her breast. The room was almost fully light now, dawn had pushed insistent fingers of brightness across the shabby interior. Lorna wondered if some kind of spell would now be broken, with the arrival of the day to chase away the gloom they had fucked in. James' thumb absently circled the nipple of the breast he held and when she turned her head to look at him, his brows were lowered and she knew the machinations of his mind had started up again. He blew out a deep sigh and entwined his hand within her damp hair, finally turning his eyes to hers.

  
‘When we fuck... this all stops...’ He pointed to his head. ‘I wonder if I have my father’s sickness sometimes. He bought my mother for a few beads. As part of the Nootka deal. Did you know that?’

  
Lorna shook her head. _The horror of being a Delaney woman_.

  
‘He destroyed her. She died in Bedlam.’  
‘He destroyed himself too. Please don’t follow his path.’

  
He pressed his lips to her brow and she felt his hard smile. They both knew this was also a plea for her own life for she was inexorably joined to him now and as she had vowed before, she would see it through. Something told Lorna that none of her exchanges with James would ever be commonplace, there would be no part to play for the pedestrian verbal niceties of society. They addressed a place of raw honesty in each other, she stripped of her actresses fabrication and he forced into her light out of his habitual secrecy.

  
‘The day is here. It is time to get up now.’ And he swung his legs round and stood up from the bed. Lorna ran her eyes over his tough, marred body again, the bizarre tattoos rippling as he bent to pull on trousers. He gathered the rest of his clothes and moved towards the door before looking back at her. She was already half asleep, pulling the blanket over herself, her face soft and serene in its repose. And he knew he had taken not nearly enough of her for them both to be sated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics are Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 'Come Into My Sleep.'


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

 

_No light, but rather darkness visible._

 

When Lorna finally awoke, the room was darkening again, the short winter days were stealing daylight greedily away as the year inched towards its dark equinox. She stretched like a cat, lengthening her limbs and flexing her fingers; only noticing sensation in her body and pushing thoughts away for a little longer. She ached. Everywhere ached, muscles knotted and bruised from the uses her body had been subjected to in the last few days. And she felt him everywhere. _James_. His hands and mouth in places where he had drawn out such dark pleasure from her. Lorna was not sure yet what to make of what had happened between them, her recollection of the previous night still really only half remembered as she drifted back to full consciousness. She slowly pushed herself out of bed in the crepuscular light of the room, pulling the rough blanket around her.

On her dressing table was a pitcher of water and bowl for washing with a cloth evidently made of an old torn up shirt. _His?_ she pondered. Her head was full of James, she felt the dangerous pull of obsession with him and she knew beyond doubt she would not have been the only woman to have felt this. As she washed, drawing the cold water and roughly scrubbing herself with the cloth, she vowed to keep her wits about her with James Delaney. Even used as she was to taking care of herself, it would still be too easy to merely give herself over to him body and mind and he undoubtedly would take her, that much she had learned about him. He collected people greedily, his iron mind calculating what they would do for him, what industry he could set them to. All of those around him marched to the peculiar beat of his drum and she would simply fall in line with the rest if she let herself. Her association, as he himself had called it, with the Delaneys must be as much on her terms as his.

When she had dressed Lorna took herself down to seek out the other inhabitants of the dank and unkempt house she was now starting to think of as home. _Careful_ , she told herself, _this could all go in an instant._ She was aware of drawing that brittle cloak of self protection around herself again as she followed the sound of the men’s voices where they drifted to her from the kitchen. When she entered the room it was evident that James had just returned from somewhere. He sat at the table still in his greatcoat staring at his hat on the table in front of him, expression habitually unreadable. Brace was sitting across from him and Lorna smirked at his expression of repressed glee as she caught the end of their conversation.

‘And she, of course, fucks everyone except her fat German husband...’

 _What an incorrigible old gossip!_ Lorna raised an eyebrow at Brace's tittle tattle. There was a letter opened on the table between the two men, ornate lettering visible and another letter beside it which appeared to be a small stitched rendering of the American flag with one word printed below – ATTEND. Lorna's curiosity was powerfully aroused by what she saw. She sat at the table and poured herself tea. Brace eyed her sourly as James continued to stare at his hat. When he finally dragged his eyes up to hers, he saw immediately that the actress was back in costume, her professional facade brisk and efficient. He understood this and it gave him too a chance to process his own thoughts about their recent encounters.

‘Do you dance, Miss Bow?’ he rumbled at her. His eyes sought hers but she concentrated on adding sugar to her tea.

‘I suspect _you_ don’t?’ she returned without answering his question.

She stirred her tea and raised the cup to her lips where his eyes followed it, a slight flare to his nostrils as he watched her throat move.

‘I have been invited to a ball. By the Countess of Musgrove. Another interested party has, ah, _urged_ me to attend. Now why do you suppose a man who does not dance has been invited to a ball?’ The grim Delaney smile played across his lips. Brace, across the table, tutted and Lorna stifled a laugh.

‘Perhaps she likes oddities and curiosities,' said Lorna calmly. She glanced at Brace mischievously, who could not supress his own smirk and he added: ‘And I’d imagine, Sir, that she thinks if you’re in the house in the light, then you cannot be lurking in the garden, in the dark, scaring people.’ Brace peered briefly at Lorna, the upward flash of his eyebrows betraying his dry humour.

James shifted in his seat but did not comment, aware of the apparent thaw between his prickly servant and the haughty woman.

Lorna picked up the second letter, the surprisingly skilful miniature American flag with the brusque command printed below it. She studied it carefully running her finger over the stitching, aware of James' purposeful attention on her.

‘What does this mean?’ she asked. ‘The Americans...?’

‘Wanting a place on the seesaw,’ interjected Brace vehemently. ‘Eh, Sir?’

James grunted. Lorna realised that Brace was possibly more informed than her about the complex situation which James was circumnavigating. She put the letter down and turned to Brace.

‘Countess Musgrove..? The name is familiar.’

Brace snorted disdainfully. ‘A woman of uncertain origin known in the past to use her charms to beguile men of great influence to improve her own position in society..’ He held her gaze steadily. The jibe did not go over Lorna's head.

‘Beguiled men are rarely ignorant of their bewitchment. Indeed, they are often willing partners,’ she stated breezily.

James stood abruptly, picking up his hat.

‘The ball is tomorrow evening. I’m sure you will have appropriate clothing and the invitation is for two. I, on the other hand, will require Brace’s assistance in locating suitable attire. So you will have to save your bickering for another time. Brace..?’ He crooked his finger at Brace who sighed and stood to follow James' burly figure out of the room and into the hallway. Lorna strained to hear their voices as they retreated.

‘I think she may just have the measure of you, Sir.’ This she heard Brace announce in a surprised tone as the front door shut heavily behind them.

Lorna spent the rest of the evening in her room, laying out the heavy red velvet dress she planned to wear at the ball. As she stripped off her clothes in front of the mirror to try the garment on, she noticed the bruises that peppered her upper arms. She also became aware of the ache in her inner thighs where she had gripped James' waist and where his hands had pushed her legs apart and held her in place.

She barely recognised the woman she had become when she’d lain with him and it still retained a dream like quality in her mind. Whether that was her own defence mechanism or not, she was not yet prepared to examine. She had avoided looking at the bruises when she'd dressed earlier but now they fascinated her – perfect finger marks. He had marked her, and even though none of it was intentional, it was there. She was struck by the notion that this was what he did – he _marked_ people, indelibly – some deliberately, some not.

Lorna held the dress up, she knew the deep red of the velvet accentuated her creamy skin and she was ashamed that she wanted James to notice. 

 

* * *

 

 

Lorna only saw James in passing the next day, he was absent from the house for much of the time. Brace was jumpy and distracted, burning food, letting kettles boil over on the stove, scalding himself as he swiped for the screeching kettle.

‘Ah _shit_!’ he bellowed and to Lorna's surprise he allowed her to wrap a cold cloth around his broiled flesh.

‘Brace, what is going on? What has he been up to all day?’ Lorna demanded, wringing out another cold cloth and applying it to his hand.

‘I’ll be damned if I know. There’s never been a Delaney man yet who's not played their cards close to their chest. But I can guarantee it’ll be bloody dangerous and probably stupid!’

‘He says he has a plan...’ Lorna faltered at Brace's incredulous expression.

‘Aye, I’m sure he does. And we’re all just part of his plan aren’t we?!’

Lorna was silent: this she could not deny. Brace gave a mirthless laugh and snatched his hand out of hers.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing with him, Miss Bow?’ Lorna felt a twist of irritation at the bitter man who smiled sardonically at her discomfort.

‘I am going to my room, Brace, to get ready for the ball. Please light the candles in the rest of house.’

As Lorna dressed in her room, she realised she felt strangely hurt, again, at Brace's knowing disdain of her; not understanding why it affected her so much. She pondered if it was his proximity to James, his apparent knowledge of his driving forces that made her want some kind of truce with Brace. However, for now, she concentrated on putting on her mask; painting her face delicately and twisting her auburn hair up off her neck.  The familiarity of her movements, deliberate and slow, comforted her as it did before a stage performance. When she had finished and stood calmly smoothing the dress down in front of the mirror, she knew she looked beautiful. Her dark eyes gleamed against her pale skin, her rich red hair tamed into a sleek chignon with only a few smooth curls framing her face. She smiled at herself, the line at the side of her mouth appearing briefly. Now she felt ready to enter into whatever challenge the ball may present.

When she walked into the parlour, the first thing she saw was James facing into the fireplace there, a glass of brandy clutched in his hand.  She instantly noted his tense body language. He was wearing an entire set of fine, new clothes that looked as unnatural on him as rags would look on Lorna. It evoked a complex reaction in Lorna to see him so obviously uncomfortable, encased in clothes he patently wasn’t used to wearing. The irritation rolled off him in waves as he grimaced at the chafe of the close-fitting clothes on his limbs. Part of Lorna was amused, not that she’d dare to show it, at his evident hatred of clothing that was beyond anything except functional and useful.

However, this hatred apparently did not extend to her clothes; she looked magnificent and he did not restrain himself in crossing the room swiftly to her and pressing himself hard up against her velvet clad back, running hands roughly up her abdomen to cup her breasts, tightly bound in the bodice of her dress. Lorna tipped her head back with a quiet moan at the dark swoop of desire that ran through her body. His hand roamed up to the black beaded choker she wore around her throat and he ran a finger around it. This was the first time he had touched her since they had fucked and they both felt the jolt of recognition in the contact. Lorna's own hand gripped his forearm where she felt the muscles move and tendons cord as his fingers stroked her neck.

‘I will be conducting other business tonight.’ This growled into her ear as he held himself against her. ‘You’d be better to stay out of it.’ He rubbed his lips along her jaw, forcing another groan from Lorna's own lips.

As his words registered, the last coherent part of Lorna pulled herself away and spun to face him indignantly.

‘Why?!’ she demanded. ‘Surely I have a right to know what your plans are if I am truly part of them?!’

His eyes darkened and narrowed, his jaw clenching in annoyance at her words. He released her from his grip and retreated to the fireplace again. Still that feeling that they circled one another, each seeking the others weakness, at times like these.

‘It is safer for you,’ he said tersely. ‘You know what you need to. For now.’

Lorna gave a sharp bark of a laugh.

And James had meant it as a protection of her but he saw the disbelief and scepticism in her face and did not know how to contradict it. He felt the deep frustration of wanting her to understand and yet knowing he was lacking her trust, her _real_ trust – and having to rely on her fear, of the Company, of the Crown, of _him_.

And it bothered him. Despite the fact he had made her cry out and gasp with his tongue and hands and cock, she kept the part that might trust him, her quiet core, at arms length and he was greedy for it.

The voice of Brace echoed from the hallway, breaking the tense atmosphere.

‘The carriage is ready, sir!’

They both turned and walked towards whatever the night and darkness was prepared to offer them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Line of poetry at start of chapter from Paradise Lost by John Milton.


	7. Chapter 7

The carriage ride to the Countess Musgrove’s residence was mostly silent. James sat across from Lorna, his face carefully blank. But his fingers drummed on his knee for the entire journey and he occasionally pulled his hand through his beard, rubbing at his jaw. Lorna was starting to recognise the signs of stress in James but she did not feel able to offer him any comfort, his retreat into himself being so utterly complete - a habit of many years, she suspected. She was holding a bunch of semi- wilted daisies in her hand; as the carriage had been about to leave, a scrawny girl with a pinched, pale face had thrust them through the carriage window.

  
‘Flowers for the lady, Sir?’ she had appealed in a high thin voice. Lorna looked away as James took them from the girl, missing the odd exchange between them. A small silver pistol was given to her by him in lieu of money. He stared intently at the girl for a moment, giving a silent nod, and then she was gone.

  
‘Here,’ he said, holding the posy out to Lorna. ‘For you.’  
‘Delightful,’ she drawled with a raised eyebrow. _Oh God is he trying_? She felt the desire to reach out and touch him, so desperately. James grunted and shrugged, and lapsing back into silence, the relentless drumming of his fingers restarted.

  
As the carriage rolled up the driveway of the house of Countess Musgrove, Lorna felt a thrill of anticipation vibrate through her body. It was a fine residence, large and imposing with many open flame lanterns lighting up the garden and entrance to the house. It had seemed to be so long to Lorna since she had been in society with people who were not silent, or bitter, or deeply secretive. Here all was light and movement and _life_ and Lorna felt its vitality rejuvenate her. James watched her from across the carriage – her eyes brighten and widen, her spine straighten as she peered out of the carriage window and felt something clench in his chest. A fear perhaps, for her - something he had not really felt in years, not for another person. Yet he knew it was not only fear, there was also an envy of her chameleon like abilities. She was a shape-shifter, constantly adapting to her surroundings whilst he was trapped in the confines of his own mind, unable to deviate from the brutal, singular path he carved out.

And it was partly this strange contrast that drew people’s eyes to the couple as they entered the hallway of the house; the woman who smiled and looked around herself openly admiring and enjoying what she saw, and the hard, intense man next to her whose eyes darted uneasily from one thing to the next. They were announced by the butler in ringing tones.

  
‘Mr James Delaney and Miss Lorna Bow!’

  
James frowned as Lorna leaned to whisper in the man's ear, who raised his eyebrows, then called out: ‘Mr James Delaney and Mrs Lorna Delaney.’

  
People thronged in the hallway and throughout the copious rooms in the mansion. Many openly curious faces turned to Lorna and James as they moved steadily through the hallway, assessing them and their relationship. And of course Delaney's name was well known, notorious even; Lorna’s phrase - _an oddity and curiosity_ \- came back to him, and he knew these people viewed him thus. Momentarily oblivious, Lorna drank in the many fashionable dresses she saw, a myriad of colours. Women bedecked with jewels too: diamonds, rubies, sapphires, all glinting in the warm flame-light. A display of wealth as they were meant to be. However, Lorna's shrewd, practised eye was able to discern between the paste and the real jewels; equally she was certain she caught the knowing eye of one or two whores amongst the great and the good of London society. And yet all was apparently decorous, she and James were offered and accepted elegant, fluted glasses of wine and they retreated to the edge of the large ballroom to watch as couples whirled past in dance, as a violin quartet played lively music. James radiated a watchful tension, one of his hands pressed hard onto the small of Lorna's back.

Quite suddenly a small impish man clutching two small silk gasbags with mouth pipes extending from them danced towards them on light feet. Lorna recognised it as laughing gas. She had witnessed the effects of the chemical before, the hysteria and lowering of inhibition.

  
‘Hello hello hello hello..’ He chanted in a low voice, circling Lorna and James. Lorna saw the exchange of looks between the two men, a warning flash from James' eyes. ‘Not hello..’ the man added quietly but his eyes alighted on Lorna in open admiration before he bowed and retreated.

  
‘You know him.’ She stated it as a fact rather than a question. She had learned it was always better to do this with James.

  
‘A chemist of my acquaintance.’

  
Lorna knew he would not elaborate and that pronouncement would have to do for now. However she could not help adding:  
‘Is he is also part of your plan? One of your league of the damned....’

  
She was met with silence as she knew she would be. She tried another tack.  
‘Perhaps, we could...’ She indicated the dance floor.  
‘Hmm. I told you. I do not dance.’ And he glanced at her with something almost like amusement. That look was enough for Lorna, for it formed the only kind of apology he was capable of.

She became aware of the eyes of a tall woman across the room focused on them. Her handsome angular face was powdered and rouged a touch too heavily, as though to hide something and her hair piled high into a fashionable style. She drifted sedately towards them, a vague half smile on her face. However Lorna was not fooled by this practised act and could see the woman’s shrewd eyes running over the form of James who had not yet noticed her.

  
‘Mr Delaney, I am Countess Musgrove. Shall we dance?’  
‘I do not.’  
‘I was told by someone named Colonade that you may accept a dance with a lady like myself.’  
Lorna saw James react to the name. He stepped forward and offered the Countess his arm.  
‘Alas, he is wrong.’  
‘Then perhaps you will disappear with me for a spell?’

  
She started to lead James away from Lorna and out of the large room. Lorna was too curious to be offended by their abrupt departure and lack of introduction and followed at a discrete distance. They threaded through the throng and into a drawing room where a shrieking crowd were being entertained by a magician, bedecked in an Eastern outfit and turban. Lorna slipped to the back of the room, her eyes trained on James face. She could see that he was starting to have trouble hiding his discomfort, his eyes sliding uneasily over the increasingly rowdy group that catcalled and hissed at his entrance.

  
‘Countess!’ squawked the magician. ‘You are just in time. I normally perform this trick with a beautiful lady and a chimpanzee but I see you have brought a gorilla instead...’ He wagged his eyebrows at the braying crowd and opened the door of a large oriental cabinet with a flourish. Lorna watched with her chest tightening as the Countess whispered something in James ear and they both stepped into the cabinet.

  
‘Will they ever be seen again! And will the gorilla eat the lady one wonders?’

  
Lorna felt a rage rise up in her at the mocking tone of the ludicrous trickster and the hilarity of the crowd. Her fingers clenched tightly into fists against her hands and she felt indignant tears spring into her eyes. Several minutes passed as the magician pranced around the cabinet making theatrical passes over it. When he finally re-opened the door, the Countess stepped out alone, an expression of mock confusion on her face.

  
‘Where is my gorilla!?’ she appealed to the magician, glancing at the enthralled crowd for approval.  
‘Get back in there and find that great humping gorilla of yours, Countess!’ he squealed.

  
The process was repeated, again several minutes passing, and when the door opened next the Countess stepped out with James behind her. She smiled back at him briefly and disappeared into the mob leaving him glaring after her angrily. Lorna unfurled her fists, aware finally of the pain that throbbed in her palms where her nails had bitten into the flesh. James began to push his way through people blindly, rearing back as drunks screamed and laughed in his face. When Lorna finally caught up with him and grabbed at his arm, he turned to her, almost snarling, a veil of sweat on his face.

  
‘James?!’ Her voice was tight, almost frantic. She felt like she could not see him, as if he was no longer present despite his physical bulk being as solid and imposing as ever.  
‘Look at me!’ she hissed as she watched his hectic eyes darting from one place to the next, the whites visible around his entire pupils. This was a new uncontrolled derangement she saw in him and she floundered in its wake. His lips were moving silently and horror was spreading across his face as his eyes swept ceaselessly over the debauched scene in front of him. _What does he see?!_ she thought desperately.

  
But when Lorna turned her own eyes onto the crowd, she realised for the first time how suddenly things had degenerated while she had been intently watching the exchange between the Countess and James. There was a thick fug of nitrous oxide drifting over the unfolding proceedings and Lorna could see the chemist still plying his wares to wild eyed revellers. The dancing had taken on a desperate edge and the whores that Lorna had recognised earlier were now openly touting their own products, several were stripped to the waist as men truffled at their bodies like pigs while other watching men hooted and screamed their approval. Others openly fucked in dark corners, a writhe of semi clothed bodies.

  
The violin quartet played grimly on, boisterous, unruly music that urged the bacchanalian scene on to further heights. But Lorna saw the strain in the eyes of the violinists, one young man in particular who could only stare down at the floor in front of him as he played, a sheen of sweat on his brow. There were people careering around in bizarre animal masks: pigs, wolves, monkeys, chasing women who screamed in delight as they were toppled back onto chairs and sofas. And Lorna realised she was disgusted at the speed at which the crack had appeared in the facade of supposed fashionable society, allowing a river of dross to pour out unabated. She saw as though through James' eyes the baseness of humans.

  
Now James was pushing through the crowds again, his face twisted in disgust. He yanked violently at the collar of his shirt, longing to be free of his deceitful clothing which seemed to him to only disguise what he believed about himself: that he was nothing more than an animal. _We are all fucking animals_. His thoughts became wild and disjointed and he felt the slide away from himself start to pull him inexorably down...

_Ah she is here! Is she here? Oh god I can see her, what does she want of me? She has brought them. I cannot give any more than I am! Forgive me .. I am trying.. I am trying. Please._

And James saw that horrific maternal spectre hovering in doorways, corners, looking in through darkened window panes. Her face was blank and yet also _expectant_. And they were with her. The slaves that he had condemned with every nail he had hammered into the ships hold that day, their hands held out in desperate supplication. They were crowding in behind her, half seen, half heard, now the whites of their eyes visible, now their hoarse voices mingling horribly with the raucous rabble of the upper echelons of London society. His heart hammered painfully in his chest, caught horribly between wanting to go to her and a fierce desire to blot her and them out forever.

  
He was only partially aware of Lorna pulling him away from the house, both of them stumbling out into garden. James stood, breathing harsh, against a wall, one hand pressed against the rough brick. He slowly became aware of the woman standing beside him who was still clutching his arm with hard fingers. _Lorna_. Her face was creased with anxiety. _Stayed with me_.

  
Lorna watched the slow shift of his attention from the internal disorder of his mind back to her – his eyes fixing on her face only gradually. But the shaking of his body told her adrenaline was still coursing through him and she became suddenly wary of the unpredictability of the situation. James thoughts had turned desperately to how badly he had struggled to stay away from Lorna over the last day and night and now his want and need for her threatened to engulf him anew. The solace she gave him, the warmth and response of her body to his. He felt the familiar confusion of his desire for her prickling on his skin like the biting of a thousand insects, a delirium of craving that made sweat spring out on his brow afresh. He turned to her slowly and pushed her hard back against the wall, taking her face between his hands. His kiss was fierce, a bite of teeth on her lower lip that spilled into pain, and a dense crowding of her body against the unyielding stone which ground into her bare shoulders.

  
‘No!’ she shouted, garnering all her strength and pushing him roughly back, away from her. ‘You cannot use me like a drug or a...a vessel for your rage!’  
James dragged his hand over his eyes, trying to clear his mind.  
‘I did not...’ he began.  
‘No!’ she repeated. ‘I do not know what happened with the Countess but I will not bear the brunt of it, James!’

  
James saw the ferocious pride and rage in her face and closed his eyes to it. He knew that she was right and that he would have used her, violently, against the wall, bruising and cutting her, if he had been allowed. Another unfamiliar emotion flooded him: shame. Shame that he was not equal to her.

  
‘Well, well, well,’ a smooth American voice intoned. ‘Mr Delaney and, ah... _Mrs_ Delaney I believe?’ A tall, balding man, with thick dark eyebrows smiled at them. There was no indication of how long he had been there. James was instantly alert, composure regained. ‘Your...’ the man paused for effect, tapping his teeth with a deeply stained finger. ‘Step-mother?’ Lorna stared at his filthy fingers, fascinated by the odd contrast between them and his well-cut, expensive clothes.

  
‘Dumbarton,’ said James, his face becoming that blank mask again. The man’s smile broadened.  
‘And I suppose that shall have to do as an introduction to the lady...?’ He laughed, but it was an unpleasant sound. ‘Do I talk freely or...’  
‘Yes,’ James interrupted and Lorna looked sharply at him, deeply surprised.

  
Dumbarton spread his hands and shrugged.

  
‘Who am I to judge? Perhaps she can be part of the deal. Safe passage and a new name in the brave new world, for both of you, hmm? It can be guaranteed, Mr Delaney. You just have to keep your side of it that’s all. No one will touch her. More than what your countrymen are offering you, I think? Yes, we'll let you think on it.’

  
Dumbarton ran his eyes over Lorna offensively, the same languid smile playing on his lips, then turned and left.

  
‘Time for us to leave too,’ James said and set off abruptly towards the front of the mansion where the carriages waited. Lorna followed, her mind brimming with the events of the night, perhaps none so much as James' descent into an apparent madness followed by his sudden admittance of her into knowledge of at least part of his plan.

  
As the carriage set off from the driveway with a spray of gravel, Lorna watched the energy drain from James' face as it had that first night she’d met him and observed his bizarre ritual in front of the fire. It seemed to Lorna that tonight was part of that same mania in him. His eyes drifted shut as he leaned his head back. Lorna tentatively reached out her hand to touch his leg and his eyes snapped open again.

  
‘James...’  
‘Do not ask me now...please.’ And his voice was not unduly harsh. ‘In time it will be necessary for you to know. And you will.’  
Lorna frowned but did not push.  
‘These clothes...they are fucking _lies_. Those people disgust me.’ And he finally got to trail the cravat from his neck and loosen his shirt.

  
‘I saw my mother among them..’ He challenged her with a look which she knew meant he felt exposed to her by his admission. ‘I do not always know what she requires of me.’  
‘But James, she is dead.’  
‘The dead speak to me. I _hear_ them. I know things about the dead.’

  
It scared Lorna that she believed him and she wondered again if she was infected with a kind of lunacy herself.  
‘I did not mean to scare you ... or hurt you.’ There was an appeal in his eyes. _Believe me_.  
‘No,’ she said. ‘But when I think I begin to know you, James, yet another door opens to yet another part of you and I am just as lost as before.’ She shook her head and felt tears threaten again. Delaney's head was down.  
‘I cannot change who I am.’  
‘Then at least provide me with guidance, a lantern, for God’s sake, that might help me navigate the way a little!’ She reached out a hand to his head, daring to pass her fingers gently over his exposed nape. He grunted quietly at her touch and although he remained motionless, that familiar energy returned to his body and her own body responded, finally, in kind. She pulled his head up to look into his eyes and despite his fatigue, she recognised the dark longing which was already kindling there again.

  
The carriage jolted to a stop outside the Delaney residence and Lorna and James moved swiftly from the carriage to the doorway of the house. And this time when he pushed her against the wall there in the dark and quiet, she moaned her approval and their hands scrabbled at each other’s clothing.

  
‘Now..?’ He murmured. ‘Now?’ His mouth peppered her neck relentlessly with kisses and she managed to hiss: ‘Now James.’

  
So when he lifted her against the wall and her legs fastened around him, his breach into her was slow and controlled and the deep grind of him filled her completely.

  
‘I will try Lorna,’ he muttered into her ear. And even in the midst of the elation his body was pushing hers to, she smiled against his shoulder at this proclamation.

  
He continued his measured thrusts, sliding his thumb down to skim her clit when he felt her nails start to press into the flesh through his shirt, then holding her up as her orgasm shuddered through her body, drawing ragged, uneven moans from her. Only then did he increase the rate of his hard strokes into her, urging himself towards the momentary oblivion and peace that his release into her body brought him.

He wondered how he would find the lantern which she had requested from his own dark soul.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lack of Zilpha in my Taboo Universe is probably most noticeable in this chapter as a lot of the scene in the tv series hinged on the James/Zilpha exchange. I can only hope I've replaced it in a convincing way!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A surrender.

_Chapter 8_

This time Lorna slept in his bed. There was no discussion about it, they simply went to the room together and silently started undressing by the light of the candle which James had carried up with them. There was a fire burning which Brace must have set and lit in preparation for his master returning. There had been no sign of the servant himself when they entered the house which Lorna was glad about. Her mind had not stopped turning the events of the night over and had restarted now even after the interlude in the doorway. There was clearly some kind of bargain which had been struck with the Americans but Lorna could only guess at the abyss which Delaney was balancing above.

  
The room was controlled chaos. There were papers, maps, books and letters strewn everywhere and it had the same air of faded wealth which permeated the rest of the house. The furniture was solid and would have been expensive when new but was now shabby and in need of repair. Peeling wallpaper and the layer of dust which drifted over everything in the house added to the slightly dismal atmosphere. It looked like James had scrawled on the wall, Lorna could not make out what the words were but there were also crudely drawn pictures - _a bird perhaps?_ She wondered if they had been rendered by him as a child or more recently. _It could be either!_ Lorna also noted with some annoyance that her trunk, containing the letters and papers of James' father, had been brought up to the room, presumably by Brace. She had always meant to give it to James; most of the letters were to him but the presumption irked her. She wondered what Brace _wouldn’t_ do for James and strongly suspected illegality would not be a barrier. James noticed her standing, half undressed, staring at the trunk. He paused in his own disrobing.

  
‘The letters in it are mostly addressed to me, are they not?’

  
‘Yes, but perhaps ask your terrier servant to seek permission next time!’ She sounded harsher than she meant to. In truth she felt suddenly and strangely diffident and self conscious in the chaotic yet intimate atmosphere of the room.

  
‘He is loyal. But almost as fucking mad as my father was. At times Brace was more of a father to me. And he has his uses.’

  
He saw that the nervous hesitancy had returned to her eyes as she hovered in front of the fire; that veil which she drew down over herself. Her delicate skin was luminous in the firelight which also illuminated her slim body through the petticoat she still wore. Her eyes were unnaturally bright with fatigue and her hair was escaping from its confinement of hairpins into an unruly auburn mass but she had never looked so alluring to him. It would be so easy for James to invoke her lust for him, for them to meet again on that familiar ground - and he ached to have her again already, he wanted her almost constantly. But he had made a vow. He would not trespass in that way again. He saw that she did not know what to do around him, how to be – this was generally an advantage he counted on with most people, making them vulnerable and easy to manipulate. However with Lorna, it frustrated him – he recalled his triumph when she had come to him in this same room on the first night he had met her and the possibilities he had believed it presented. _That was before_.... he cut the thought off. Now he wanted her to open to him on another level entirely. He walked over to where she stood and sat in a chair near the fire. Dressed in only the shirt he wore at the ball, now loosened, he looked more himself to Lorna – the tattoos of his chest and thighs visible once more.

  
‘Fathers are a moveable feast, hmm? But mothers ... they are an undeniable biological fact, don’t you think?’

  
He stared into the fire as he spoke then looked expectantly at her.

  
Lorna was caught unawares by this sudden philosophical musing. Yet she also marvelled at how his strange speech patterns, his habit of talking in riddles and lack of any preamble into unconventional subjects, was becoming the norm for her.

  
‘My own mother was also an actress so she was a . _.moveable feast_ , as you say, as all actresses are. And my father, well, he may have been Hamlet or King Lear or perhaps even Oberon for all I, or indeed my mother, knew. So I make no claim to having parents who were constant or reliable myself, James.’ She smiled to show she was at peace with this notion and that his obfuscation did not deter her from understanding what he meant.

  
‘So you have been acting your whole life.’ This was made as a statement but Lorna could certainly not deny it and he did not make it sound like an insult as most people would have. Still, she could not help herself retorting: ‘And I am good at it, for a _tawdry_ actress.’ She glared at him.

  
‘Hmm. You remember everything I say. You are not tawdry Lorna. I see good in you. You have good in you. You showed loyalty and bravery in the gaol.’ _To me_ , he wanted to say. _You proved yourself to me_. But he did not say it because he knew it would sound hard and mercenary to her but it was more than that, a million times more, to him – a man who did not trust and expected treachery at every turn. She hovered by his chair, stealing glances at him while she pretended to be warming herself by the fire.

  
‘You doubt my motives, Lorna.’ He squinted up at her, at her fire-lit profile, half turned away from him but her face had softened; a tiny smile, not quite enough to mark her cheek with the singular laughter line, playing around her mouth.

  
‘I don’t know or understand your motives, James.’

  
‘I think you begin to know me. You do.’ He saw the scepticism in her face.

  
She slipped closer to him, knelt by the chair and held her hands out to the flames.

  
‘I _want_ to James.’

  
‘I have not had to think of another person's welfare for a long time. I am ... unaccustomed...to explaining what and why I do things. I tell people to do what I want of them and they do it. As was once expected of me.’

  
‘And is unquestioning loyalty always a good thing?’

  
James looked down at the woman who tested and challenged him at every turn, and yet who was kneeling by him so apparently passively. He had spent so long instilling terror in those around him, shaping his world so that he controlled everything about it that to contemplate any other way was a distant concept to him. Yet here he was, thinking back to the days when Stuart Strange’s tyranny and control over him was complete and the dreadful events that it led to.

  
‘Not always. But it depends upon the purpose of it.’ He frowned as he said It, a tendril of doubt creeping into his thoughts.

  
‘But it is always someone else’s purpose or vision, James. There is no real autonomy for the one who follows. Someone whose will is stronger always has their own agenda.. Or sometimes perhaps they don’t even know themselves why.’

  
‘Then they are fools.’

  
Lorna saw the jaw tighten, the shutters lower in his face. That James' motivation was obscure to her may be the case but that it be opaque to him she knew was unimaginable.

  
‘Clever men do foolish things as well,’ she suggested, knowing that she was now venturing out onto thin ice. But James recognised the disquiet on her face and knew it was at the thought of him putting himself in perilous situations. He felt the conditions of the unspoken contract between them expand. He nodded.

  
‘I have sworn to do very foolish things.’

  
That wall which Lorna butted against was evident once more, a solid force between them. She realised she must make her peace with it, and with the limits of the driven, singular man who was staring down at her with an appeal in his eyes for her to trust him. She twined her arm around his calf and leant her head on his knee, the warmth of him making her instantly sleepy. His hand ghosted along her cheek, one finger running over her lips.

  
‘Go to bed. You are tired and I want to go through this trunk of my father’s gibberish.’

  
Lorna did not argue. The night had been incredibly long and she felt the drag of fatigue on her mind and body. She flitted across the room to the bed in the corner and slipped into it. As she lay watching his silhouette against the fire, he dragged the trunk towards him and flipped the heavy lid open. Her eyes closed and sleep came swiftly.

 

* * *

James had only read the first few letters before he needed rum to counteract the bile that rose in his throat. Reading his father's pathetic excuses and mad ravings about his mother threatened to send James over the precipice of his own sanity. His throat tightened painfully as he began to feed the papers into the fire systematically, crouched in front of the fireplace. Words and phrases in the Twi language fell from his bitter lips as the rum dulled his senses.

  
‘James what are you doing?!’ Lorna stood behind him, rubbing her eyes. The fire flamed very brightly as it consumed the old paper. ‘Those letters are beautiful and the drawings and paintings are from all over the world. To you, while you were gone. He never gave up hope!’

  
James looked back at her over his shoulder and she saw the feral hatred of his father in his eyes, and that his own madness was visible again along with the effects of the rum. He tipped the bottle back into his throat and tossed another pile of drawings onto the blaze.

  
‘He gave up on my mother when she refused to play the Italian Countess or Italian Princess or whatever he demanded of her. Her death in Bedlam must have been unimaginable ...’ He did not continue and when Lorna knelt next to him she saw the tears in his eyes. She could not defend the old man anymore and vaguely wondered why she’d ever tried. Being confronted by his tortured son’s pain drove the last vestige of loyalty to Horace Delaney out.

  
‘I am sorry that happened to her,’ she said simply. And she went to him and pulled his head against her shoulder, crouching beside him. Lorna's own tears sprang into her eyes but she kept them silent. She felt his surrender to her come as quietly as hers did to him.

 


	9. Chapter 9

James watched quietly as Lorna fought her way back to consciousness from a deep, motionless sleep. His head was thick with the after-effects of the rum, a dark thump behind his forehead that forced his hand up to rub his temple. They lay close together in the bed, not quite touching, although earlier James had woken with her warmly furled around him like a hibernating animal, her fists clenched at his chest and her face pressed into his shoulder. She had guided him to the bed the night before, pushed him even, after finding him incinerating his father’s letters. And he’d been dimly aware of her voice, low and persuasive: ‘I know you’re tired, James. And drained. Like you can’t go on much more. You just need to sleep now.’

James had permitted her to lead him like a child; allowed himself to succumb to his nascent faith in her ability to siphon off his rage - with a few words, her fingers pressed into his flesh, the sight of her eyes clouding over. Her ability to anchor him and the slow realisation that he needed her in this grounding way. His mind still revolted from it, from the ransom that must be paid by being beholden to another human being, and to Lorna Bow in particular. Still only semi aware of the fuzzy loss of distinction that had moved her from _what can she do for me_ to _how do I keep her with me_. It disturbed him and he felt the deep unease of feeling off kilter within himself.

Now Lorna’s eyes slid open as she awoke fully. He could have turned away but he kept his own eyes on hers, fascinated by the change in them from unfocused to alert, her pupils widening. He knew her gaze had drifted to the circular window behind him where a rime of intricate frost had formed overnight, partly obscuring it. He also knew she would be admiring it, commonplace yet ethereal, her mind drawn as always to insubstantial beauty. He could not decide yet if this was a fault in her or that it merely irritated him because he was utterly incapable of it, it had been brutalised out of him. She was studiously avoiding his eyes now.

James recognised that the year was on the turn, about to tip itself over into winter and he felt again the relentless pressure of needing things to keep moving; his plans, what he wanted people to do and the painful awareness, always, of his freight of carried guilt which he attempted to ward off with the incantations he had been taught in Africa. The only other thing that had come close to offering a balm to the storm of his mind was the woman lying next to him – unexpected and curiously enduring, tenacious where most people flinched and fell away from him.

Lorna was aware that James was intently staring at her with darkened eyes. She knew she was under some kind of scrutiny and the turning cogs of his mind were almost audible. She was learning to tolerate this aspect of his behaviour and busied herself following the iced lace patterns on the windows with her own eyes. There was an almost translucent, paper-thin difference between the fascination and the desire that always ticked over between them, thrumming like the steady movement of a clock that could sometimes be muffled but never completely ignored. She knew that she could reach for his hard body through the silence between them now and that he would let her and they would flare against each other instantly and wordlessly. The thought of it made her take a deep, convulsive breath but she did not breach the space between them. She met his eyes finally and murmured:

‘Are you alright?’

‘Hmm. I’d be better if I’d left the rum where it was.’

‘Did you burn them all?’

‘There were pictures of you. By my father.’

He did not elaborate on this but Lorna knew it troubled him. Perhaps it was just a commonplace jealousy but Lorna knew that things were rarely so straightforward with James. He had recognised her in those drawings which his father had scrawled; even in a few pencil lines, he'd caught her essence, but equally James had distinguished with some satisfaction that she also wore her guarded, brittle mask in them. He had not burned them but knew he would never look at them again.

‘He was my husband, James.’

Again James felt the ghost of his hatred rise and he clenched his teeth. He became aware of her hand on his arm, and it was a cold light touch, tentative.

‘We were never like man and wife. He protected me, at first. It was like... being sheltered. While I was of interest.’

And in that statement James recognised that his father had taken her and used her perhaps in a way that assuaged his own guilt. But he had damaged Lorna Bow and James saw that his own actions mirrored his father’s and felt a rising revulsion at himself.

‘Yes he saw people as currency. It is a sickness he had. Even me, as a child. My mother ... as you know. So I learned my own trade at the foot of a master.’

Lorna thought _what was he like as a child?_ There are some people who seem so remote from ever being a child, of stumbling through experiences for the first time with an innocence and joyfulness in how absurd life is. It was not that she couldn’t imagine him as an innocent but more that she thought he probably ran headlong from childhood, leaving it behind as an encumberance, a weakness: a powerless time. She could try to imagine him as a child, perhaps a serious boy, still with a knack to draw people to him, with a young, softer body free of the dark bands of ink like shackles. But she knew she could get the depiction wrong easily and now was not the time to ask him.

‘I will try to do right by you, Lorna..’

Lorna gave her sharp barking laugh.

‘Spare me from being done right by, James. What a prosaic, dreary notion! Just allow me to play my part on equal footing. You can’t right _all_ the wrongs in the world you feel the Delaney's have dealt out. And I would rather be useful than an albatross you must wear around your neck as penance!’

And James could not help but smile at this, although it turned swiftly to a grimace as his head throbbed in protest. Again she had briskly pulled him from self indulgence with a few well chosen words. He knew he underestimated her.

‘You are useful. You keep me in the land of the living. Rather than with the dead where I should be.’

He held a finger out and ran it down the contours of her face, tracing her nose then lips, watching her swallow thickly at his touch.

‘Come here,’ he said, grasping her chin, his eyes fixed on her lips. But Lorna summoned her indignation like a shield.

‘I can hear Brace crashing around in the kitchen. And I am hungry,' she said and rolled herself away from James and out of the bed. He fell back onto the mattress and watched her march out of the bedroom, his desire for her pulsing through his veins.

 

In the kitchen, Brace turned as Lorna entered after swiftly washing and dressing in her own room. His face was flushed and affronted at something, which would account for the dramatic clattering of dishes and utensils while he prepared breakfast. As always with Brace, Lorna presented a calm, unflappable front as she helped herself to tea.

‘The ball?’ he snapped finally, glaring at her.

Lorna paused before adding milk to her cup. ‘Yes..?’

‘How was the bloody Musgrove ball?!’

‘I think Miss Bow would have enjoyed it more with a partner who would dance.’ James' voice preceding him into the kitchen. Brace snapped his attention instantly to James, watching him closely as he stood before the fireplace.

‘Well, it couldn’t have been more entertaining than the events here last night. Soldiers in red. Soldiers in blue. Out on the foreshore. Running by the window.’ Lorna could hear Brace’s rage kindling.

The line of James' shoulders altered almost imperceptibly as he took this information in, but he remained silent. Lorna also knew to stay silent and sit out what would happen next. Brace's face grew incredulous at the muted response.

‘They stopped every barge heading East on the river and searched them! You see, Miss Bow, there was a robbery last night. Saltpetre from the arsenal of the East India company, to make gunpowder no less. Under their very noses. What kind of madman would do that, eh?’ He stared pointedly at the back of James' head, who did not turn. Lorna digested this news slowly, a horrible fear began to rise in her.

‘The Company have already said they will hang the robbers!’

He thrust a cup of tea savagely at James who took it silently and drank it staring into the fireplace.

‘Insurrectionists they say. Frenchmen. Though none spoke French.’ Brace glanced between James and Lorna, waiting for some kind of reaction. None came but for a grunt from James.

‘The lady and I will take our breakfast on the foreshore, Brace. Let them search the house if they come. We have nothing to hide here.’

James plucked 2 boiled eggs from the table and Lorna followed him out with Brace's bitter laughter ringing in her ears. As soon as they were out of earshot and on the black and stinking banks of the Thames, Lorna turned to James in the watery morning light. Her face was white and stark.

‘You will hang! Tell me why you will not hang?!’

Tears pricked her eyes instantly and her hands clenched in rage.

‘I am happy to admit that I don’t want James Delaney to die! Tell me that _you_ do not want James Delaney to die?!’

James considered for a short moment and then answered calmly.

‘The saltpetre we stole had already been sold to the Royal Navy. So it belonged to the Crown. So therefore the Prince Regent has an excuse to prosecute the Company for negligence, as the powder was in their charge at the time. The Company can cause me a lot of difficulties. But only the King can have me hanged. The Crown will choose to make a deal. So I will not hang.’

‘Oh my God James, these machinations! They are _exhausting_! You gamble so much. You gamble _yourself_!’

James shelled an egg deftly and pushed it into his mouth. Lorna’s egg remained clutched in her hand.

‘I will not hang,’ he repeated. ‘I have business to attend to today. I will be home in the evening.’

He left her alone on the foreshore, brimming with fear and anger and frustration. Lorna hurled the boiled egg against the filthy ground. Two ravens swooped from their unseen perch and squabbled over the smashed remains.

 

* * *

 

Evening brought a modicum of peace to Lorna in the confines of the Delaney house. Although she had spent the rest of the morning after James' departure fighting back tears in her room, in the early afternoon she had ventured down to the kitchen and spent some time in relatively companionable silence with Brace, who puffed a pipe meditatively in front of the fire. They had eaten a meal together and afterwards Lorna helped the old man clear up. She stood at the sink with her sleeves rolled up and turned to him where he scrubbed the kitchen table.

‘He will not hang. He will not,’ she said this decisively as Brace's lined face crumpled further at her words. He did not answer, shrugged one shoulder.

‘He will not,’ she repeated, more to herself. A loud knocking at the door of the house took the wiry servant out of the kitchen and down the hallway. He was back in the kitchen quickly, his face incredulous.

‘It’s for you. Some mess of a man called Cholmondeley. Says he knows you.’

Mr Cholmondeley bowed low at Lorna's appearance at the door although he kept his eyes on her throughout, appraising her and her reaction to him. He was slightly dishevelled, something Lorna would learn was common for him, and always carried with him the air of a man waiting to be entertained by life. There was also something of the theatrical about him, which Lorna recognised and couldn’t help reacting to. Cholmondeley was well aware that he needed to work hard around self contained women like Lorna who intrigued him with her air of disdain. He was unsure of the relationship between her and Delaney but was willing to test the waters: never a man to pass up a challenge.

‘Is she yours?’ he had asked Delaney earlier in the day when he’d visited the farm to inspect the saltpetre delivery.

And: ‘Do you think her beautiful?’

And: ‘Can I call on her?’

But the infuriating man had answered none of these questions, his face carefully blank, except to toss one question carelessly back to Cholmondeley:

‘Do _you_ think her beautiful?’

‘Not only is she amongst the large number of women I would sleep with, she is also amongst the much smaller number of women I would masturbate over,’ he had smirked. Surely this would produce a reaction from the Stone Delaney. He had merely grunted, glaring at the sacks of saltpetre where they were piled in the barn they stood in and then demanded that the gunpowder be produced in a ridiculously short time.

Now in the darkened hallway of the Delaney household, he knew he probably looked a mess, eyes bloodshot and bagged, skin greyish and threaded with red veins. A hangover from the laughing gas and fatigue at his efforts at the farm. It was taking more and more of the damned stuff for him to reach his own oblivion these days, even as he sold it to the desperate gentry of London town.

Cholmondeley’s meeting with the strange James Delaney was a godsend in both monetary terms and in relieving the abject boredom he had sunken into - his existence had degenerated into rutting bored married dames and widows and being paid to carry out chemical party tricks. The appearance of Delaney, to recruit him into his bizarre crew, had reminded Cholmondeley that he actually possessed a quite dazzling intelligence. He had been feted as the next brilliant scientist of his generation when he had arrived in London fresh from Cambridge 15 years earlier but had swiftly sank into the more debauched excesses of London life. Despite writing a number of books which were well-received in the relevant circles, they had invariably sold poorly, being of a rather niche subject. It was one of these books that Delaney had made reference to when he’d drawn Cholmondeley into his employment. And Cholmondeley always thought of it as a drawing in, almost against his will, but not quite.

Not an easily shocked man, he had floundered at the appearance of the dark, grim man who had waited, implacable, for Cholmondeley to hurriedly withdraw his cock from the scandalized woman he had been fucking over a table in a side room. Cholmondeley generally had his pick of women at his ‘performances’ and considered it to be an extremely fortunate perk of the job. Cholmondeley knew himself to be a greedy sort of man, for experiences, people, money, he wanted them all, but it had taken more than his usual few seconds consideration for him to agree to Delaney's offer. There was something about Delaney which discomforted him, his sombre regard felt like a scouring of all Cholmondeley’s weaknesses which found him severely wanting. Indeed, the name James Delaney was vaguely familiar to him, as it was for many to a greater or lesser degree in London society circles. _The Devil Delaney._ None of it positive but Cholmondeley knew the ridiculous superstitious nature of humans, always ready to embroider fuzzy facts with a flourish of the supernatural. Still, the foolhardy side of himself ultimately ran headlong into his association with Delaney.

Although Lorna found the small impish man slightly ludicrous, she found herself being almost charmed by him all the same, recognising a sharp intelligence and quick humour that sparked from him. Cholmondeley was the complete antithesis of James, a slicing blade to his blunt battering ram. Yet there was a restless quality to Cholmondeley, something which suggested an impermanence and a certain recklessness; this he did have in common with James and Lorna was certain it was being utilised in some way.

‘You are a chemist, Mr Cholmondeley?’ Lorna paused.

‘I hope you are being put to better use than to gas the upper classes of London into oblivion at every soiree?’

Cholmondeley smiled easily at Lorna's jibe.

‘It is one way I earn a living Mrs Delaney. We all have several strings to our bows do we not? I would love to see you perform...I recognised you straight away at the Musgroves..the famous Lorna Bow.’

His words were light and skilful. He held out a package to her, wrapped in brown paper and tied with red ribbon.

Lorna nodded with a tight smile and took it, feeling the weight and shape and guessing books.

‘Shakespeare.’ He smiled back at her. _A safe choice_ thought Lorna.

‘Well it is unlikely as I am forbidden to perform at the moment. Also, I am known as Mrs Delaney when not in theatre. I can assume you are under the employ of Mr Delaney?’

‘Mr Cholmondeley,’ Delaney’s voice was deep and sudden behind Lorna and she started at the sound, feeling foolish at her fright.

‘What can I do for you?’ James was radiating displeasure at the sight of the chemist. He glowered at the small man in a way that Lorna recognised he used to intimidate. She had no idea when he had returned although he was wearing his greatcoat and hat increasing his foreboding bulk.

‘I came to call on the lady. With a gift. I was hoping we would take tea...or something..’ He floundered.

‘It is too late in the day for tea Mr Cholmondeley. Look, the moon is up. I am sure you have other night time business requiring your attention.’ And he swung the heavy front door shut in the surprised man’s face.

‘He'll be back.’ said Lorna. ‘I have dealt with Cholmondeley’s before.’

That evening James watched her reading the books Cholmondeley had brought. He could not drag his eyes away. Her lips moved occasionally as she murmured the words and she did not look at him once across the room. He was restless, pacing between a window and the chair across from hers. She was caught in the lamplight which lit the books for her, every tiny movement of her face illuminated in detail which he studied, his throat tightening at her curved cheek, her pursed lips. He thought dimly of the gunpowder factory out in the dark of the countryside and the chemist there with his quick mind overseeing it. The chemist who had raked his eyes over the woman who was now serenely reading the books he had brought her. The desperate need to possess her, to bind him to her, physically and mentally, was starting to rise in James once more.

'He is interested in you.’

He did not look at her. Began to slowly fill his pipe.

‘You _interest_ him greatly, Lorna.’

He moved to stand in front of her where she had curled her feet under herself in the chair and tapped the books with the unlit pipe.

‘I am used to _interest_ like his. Besides, I like Shakespeare. Listen...

 _I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth. We are errant knaves all. Believe none of us_.

Remind you of anyone?’ she teased him, peering over the top of the book she was perusing.

‘Ha. My father. Did you want me to say myself? It could be any man, myself included...you do not need to shine your light on me, Lorna.’

'Well. Hamlet was mad too. A very difficult man,’ she said lightly. She snapped the book closed as James placed the unlit pipe on the table. The atmosphere had changed suddenly and they regarded each other in the dim room, a shadow of their first meeting.

‘Come here,’ James said. 'Now.' He held out his hand.

And Lorna knew they were going to the room at the top of the house.

In the hallway James pushed her against the peeling wallpaper and kissed her roughly with her face pressed between his hands, his tongue pushing against hers.

In his room, there was a moment of silence and stillness before Lorna said:

‘I want to see you. Let me see you. Please.’

James stripped his clothes off silently and quickly. He felt as though he had been walking the tightrope of his need for Lorna constantly and longed to finally fall into it.

He stood naked before her while she remained clothed, dropping to her knees in front of him, a worshipping. The map of his body never failed to surprise her each time she saw it and she marvelled at the ease with which he inhabited it.

‘Who marked you like this?’ she murmured, drawing her tongue across the black band of ink on his thigh.

He shuddered deeply, his hand clamping onto the back of her neck.

‘A devil.’ His eyes were wide and Lorna saw the glint of madness in them when she looked up at him. His belief in such things was deep and complete.

‘Why?’

‘Because I deserved it.’

‘That is no answer.’ She ran her hands up the taut muscles of his stomach. Pressed fingers to scars and skin and ink in a slow, precise frenzy. Drank him in with her eyes and followed with her tongue, the briny taste of him an intoxication.

‘Who gave you this scar?’ Her light fingers drifted around his marred eye, tracing the hooked scar, then her lips followed, ghosting across it. She felt his lashes brush her mouth as his eyes closed. He was hypnotised by her touch, as tightly coiled as a cornered animal yet with his whole being straining towards her.

‘A warrior gave me it. In Africa where I was reborn.’ His voice was roughened by his lust for her. His eyes black as they bored into hers, waiting, curiously passive, for her next move.

‘Did you deserve that too?’

‘I did. The blood cleansed me.’

‘No James. Blood does not cleanse.’ She licked his neck slowly, letting her teeth close brief and fierce over the thick flesh. This produced a hoarse groan and his hard hand grasped her waist reflexively.

‘You have been branded. Like an animal. You do not deserve that.’

‘I was taught to be an animal. That I was an animal.’

Her words were pushing him closer to memories he wished to keep submerged but he felt a compulsion to answer her questions even as his body responded to her touch. He wanted to urge her on. _Ask me more, I will tell you. You will know me. Ask me_. He had never felt a need to be understood before, never wanted to share any of himself with another in this way, had scorned it as a weakness.

But words had fallen away from Lorna now as she circled him slowly, hands reading his body, lips pressing to damaged flesh, fiercely willing the marks away. If she could strip the skin away like a tattered cloak she would have but instead she reached for his hardening cock, stroking it deeply once, then twice; his whole body tensed at the contact, a soft grunt reverberating against Lorna where she pressed herself onto him. His hands fell to pushing the heavy material of her dress, impatient to get to skin.

‘I want to touch you. I want to feel you on me Lorna.’

And she complied. A swift removal of her restrictive clothes and his fingers were on her flesh, running along the planes and contours of her body, now his head ducking to trail his tongue along the sharp edge of her collarbone, now his hands pressing her to him greedily, a devouring of her as he meant, a binding of her to him.

So when he sank to his knees before her on the floor, she knew he wanted her to lower herself onto him. Skin sliding slowly over skin as she enveloped him and he felt himself take root deep inside her then deeper still as she sank further onto him. They stilled, her breasts against his chest, her heart fluttering there in time with his steady beat; his eyes drifted closed as he felt the moment of peace that always came when he was with her in this way.

As she began to move on him her warm clench drew his breath out in gasps; she set a steady pace with her legs wrapped around him, clinging to his shoulders. His hands gripping her hips, her buttocks, pushed her on relentlessly as their movements became more desperate, he thrusting up into her.

Coiling a hand in her hair he pulled her head back from his shoulder where her forehead was pressed, needing to see her face, her eyes, as he felt his release approach. Her lips stretched almost to a grimace as she ground against him, meeting his hard deep strokes. He held out, watching her start the climb before her freefall, mesmerised by her as she finally came, grinding his name out through clenched teeth as his thighs shook and his own climax came deep and strong, drawing curses from him. They remained locked together, panting as they came down. James pressed his mouth to hers catching her breath, his hand stroking the length of her back.

‘You will stay with me Lorna. We will go to America together. I need to know you will stay with me...’ he whispered, an entreaty in his voice.

‘Then keep yourself alive James. Please live. I cannot give myself to a dead man.’

With the conditions of their union laid out, they could both only surmise if they were capable of meeting them.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since I updated. This is just an attempt to get back into the saddle. So a short chapter only.

Chapter 10

 James was deep in thought as his horse took him towards the farm where the vats of chemicals were being tended by the chemist. He had endured a succession of meetings in the last 2 days. First with the glib Dumbarton who had blackmailed him with barely veiled threats of his knowledge of the whereabouts of the farm and Cholmondeley’s involvement. His price was the gunpowder within 8 days, an impossibility made possible, Dumbarton claimed, by the French Experiment – something he urged James to consult the chemist about. This was followed by a further confab with the Countess Musgrove in which he attempted to confirm his safe passage by ship, when the time came, through the American blockade. James did not miss her concealed and momentary confusion at his mention of Dumbarton’s insistence the gunpowder be provided earlier than planned and stored it away for later perusal. He and Musgrove had circled one another their intent and aspirations laid out but with no trust to solidify them.

‘Trust takes time, does it not?’ He offered her a tight smile.

The Countess had laughed easily.

‘That is one thing we do not have a lot of, Mr Delaney.’

  
James felt the pull of fatigue on him, mental and physical, and heard Lorna’s voice again. _These machinations, they are exhausting_! He could not stop. He was unable and unwilling to stop. But his mind now drifted to Lorna constantly whenever he considered the future and how it stretched before him.

There had been a long and strange disconnect between Delaney’s body and mind before Lorna – his body had been merely a machine to him, something he drove on relentlessly to do the bidding of his mind. Ignoring pain, ignoring fatigue, he had learned to take himself beyond his own flesh. He was simply a beast of burden and his physical body was nothing more than the manifestation of his unflinching purpose. Lorna Bow’s arrival in his life and conscience had instigated an excruciating process in James which went fathoms deeper than physical pain. The agony of putting himself in her path, in dredging up some remnant of his soul to offer her. The realisation that he still had some form of conscience. The self awareness she had forced upon him and his ever present knowledge that he walked a lethal path. And that now she walked it with him.

When he was younger he had been aware of his effect on women and had taken full advantage of it, fucking his way around London – whores, the daughters and wives of fellow officers and Company men, it all meant the same to him – nothing more than a distraction to watch these women moan and writhe below him. He had seen that ghost of interest in him in Countess Musgrove’s eyes during their meetings; uncomplicated, appraising lust which he knew he could easily exploit. She had attempted to hide it and it was tinged with her apprehension, their complicated political relationship would not allow her to try and take him as she did many men in London.

Sexual desire had been a foreign country to James for many years and had only been reignited by Lorna: her challenge, her ability to drag him blinking into the light. He thought of her back in his bed where he had left her sleeping, her pale sleek body, his endless want for her. The slide and fit of her lithe body against his, slick with her desire, his own muscles tensing with need and the frenzy of his brain when he was buried deeply inside her. The unseen strength in her when his fucking became desperate; to match him, to keep pace with him, her fingers clutched in his hair as his hips thrust against hers, and the ragged cry of her name drawn hoarsely from his mouth.

  
‘Do you think her beautiful?’ Cholmondley had asked.

 _She is more than beautiful. She is necessary. She is mine_. And he was unabashed at the fierce feelings of possession which were invoked by the chemist’s interest in Lorna....

James had become aware of the man following him some way back. The dark figure stayed hunched low on his horse, maintaining a distant but steady pursuit. He had been expecting an attempt like this but the clumsiness of it made him shake his head. _Fucking fools._ He reigned his cantering horse into a trot, finally slowing to stop near a copse of trees where he tethered the animal and retreated into the cover of the small forest. His hand drifted to his waist where the ever present curved knife was fastened. He slipped his fingers into the handle and the vicious blade now became an extension of his hand as he meant it to.  He did not have to wait long for the man to come.

 It was too easy. The scream and struggle of the hapless man was swiftly subdued by James' limbs wrapped around his and the press of the blade to the man’s exposed throat as he was dragged from his panicked horse and onto the ground.

  
‘You have the shadow of death upon you,’ he told the man whose harsh breathing sent out plumes of vapour into the early morning air. ‘Now. Are you King or are you Company?.. No matter.’ James sent a slash of his blade across the man’s chest, ripping his clothing and gashing open the skin. The heady aroma of blood hit his nostrils as the man gave a strangled cry of fear and pain. James felt the pull of savagery on him, willing him to rend, tear, consume the flesh of his enemies; a grotesque intimacy in the entwining of his limbs with those of the terrified man, whose stench was sweat and terror. He made an effort to pull himself back from the brink; that edge he hovered at, always, between the man and the demon.

  
‘There is nothing for you along this road apart from death. Listen to me. You will tell your... _friends_ how you almost lost your heart.’ He flipped the man over and drew the knife across the back of each of his calves deeply, slicing through the hamstrings. James was a stone to the cries of agony which gurgled from the man’s throat. He climbed back onto his horse and urged it on across the heath without looking back. The man was already in the past.

 

* * *

 

Lorna drifted around James’ room, her fingers brushing against the maps, the books, the strange carved wooden figures she had not noticed before; the sheer mess of the place. Ink pots and paper scrolls littered every surface. There was an intricate model of a ship that she had noticed Delaney staring at from time to time. On the walls were indecipherable drawings: scrawled birds, animals, symbols which spoke to Lorna of veiled meanings. Her mind strove desperately to decode them.

  
It came to Lorna - what was the room but a depiction of James’ own mind – chaotic, yet imbibed with careful meaning, known only to him. Lorna had a sudden but vague memory of her mother’s dressing room – the snarled piles of clothes upon the floor, the pots of make up and perfume and the increasingly blurred reflection of her mother in the mirror. The image of her which retreated further into the past with each year.

It was true that Lorna had always felt at home within chaos – it was familiar and strangely comforting for her to make sense of it. She would position herself as a voice of reason, an eye in a storm. In James Delaney, she realised she had met the ultimate challenge and making sense of him would be endless. But she knew he looked to her now, she was an anchor in his world: deeply embedded in the rocky surface. And Lorna felt herself riveted there.

  
There was no return from where she was now. A sudden inrush of reality hit her, engulfing her with overwhelming fear; she gasped and clutched the back of a chair.

 

* * *

 

 James stared at the chemist, who glared back unflinchingly. They were standing beside the huge tubs of chemicals which belched fumes from the pocked surface of the glutinous mixture contained within. The boy Robert was asleep on a few wooden boards fashioned as a bed in the corner.

  
‘No,’ said Cholmondeley. ‘No. The French Experiment was... entirely French in its conception and was therefore a...Total. Fucking. Disaster.’ He paused for effect, searching the impassive face before him for any reaction. There was none. James merely raised his eyebrows and waited for Cholmondley to continue. He felt the heavy weight of Delaney's expectation bear down on him and he shifted uncomfortably in the silence. Finally James spoke.

  
‘And?’

  
‘Well the French needed gunpowder fast so they added chlorate to the mix...’

  
James waited, a dark impatience emanated from him that Cholmondeley was not immune to.

  
‘As an experiment in making gunpowder fast, it was a wild success. But when you add chlorate to gunpowder, you need to stir and stir and not stop stirring. You need men. Working in shifts around the clock... And even then, with all these things in place there is the still the distinct possibility that...’

  
The chemist paused, a sheen of sweat on his brow, his eyes wide and slightly wild. He spread his hands.

  
‘Boom,’ he said softly. He smiled gently, unable to help enjoying the drama of his delivery. ‘They almost fucking blew Mauritius in half.’

  
‘Where do we get this chlorate?’

  
Cholmondeley gave a surprised bark of a laugh.

  
‘Oh no, Mr Delaney. No, no. What you need to ask is where you will find a chemist fucking insane enough to attempt it!’

  
‘I will get you men. Enough men.’  
‘No.’

  
James turned his regard onto Cholmondeley fully now whereas before he had been gazing at the vats.

  
‘They have your name Cholmondeley. They have your name and you will hang. We will all hang in eight days.’

  
‘You would risk the life of your son?’

  
This was a stab in the dark. Cholmondeley had made Robert into an apprentice of sorts, teaching him to stir and taste the noxious stew at various points in its genesis and he had taken to it excellently, a quiet watchful and intelligent child. And Cholmondeley often wondered who he was to Delaney: a bastard son? A half brother by a whore sprung from the loins of old man Delaney? He knew it was outrageously risky to infer outright that Delaney had a familial connection to the ragged and unloved boy. However Delaney appeared unmoved and did not react in anger. His eyes merely drifted momentarily over the sleeping boy.

  
‘Just get the chlorate, hm? That is your job. I will give you the men.’

  
As James rode away from the farm, he felt the inexorable bearing down of pressure that he must in some way attempt to redistribute; the need to keep the clock ticking over, even as it’s mechanism threatened to spring apart in his hands.  But he kept on, even as the passage of time conspired endlessly against him. His mind turned back to Chamber House and the woman waiting there for him.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter. I will advance the plot eventually! This is just some stuff I had to get out of my head. Some semi-smutty stuff mainly.

He was not sure what drew him into the forest. Some inkling of the water there perhaps. His horse had slowed as they passed it, nostrils flaring, ears pricked. It had pulled him out of the maelstrom of his mind. He allowed the horse to stop, it picked at the ground with its hooves, blowing vapour out into the quiet surroundings. James sat silently for a few moments, peering past the dense branches to the glimmer of the water within. The grime of the farm and the stench of the man he had accosted earlier itched on his skin. He glanced down at his gloved hands, he knew blood had gathered under his fingernails. The air was laden with the wet organic smell of decaying leaves and heavy soil; he took a deep breath and dismounted the horse. The pull was there, almost a crackling in the air. _She will be there_. He fumbled in a pocket of his greatcoat and pulled the small tin of chalky pigment from its depths. Discarding his heavy leather gloves he ran some of the red stain down each side of his face. Now he felt ready.

Entering the forest drew a momentary veil of silence over James' mind, he was now only comprised of his senses – smell, touch, hearing. Instinct kept him crouched low to the ground, his eyes darting to the smallest sound, his fingertips alive to the rough feel of wood as he pushed branches aside. And then he felt the disconnect approach as his mind travelled away through the tangle of hanging shrubbery towards the water. Even as James' mind left the confines of his body his hands, like an automaton, removed his clothing methodically, so that when he entered the water it lapped at his skin unfettered. He stood with the water up to his waist and listened:

The startled call of a bird.

The wet lap of the water’s edge on the bank.

And then, further away, a chant, a rhythmic drone that was almost lost to him. He listened, intent, his head bent to the vanishing sound. His lips began to move in time to the words as they revealed themselves to him.

_Come to me. Stay with me. Come to me. Stay with me. I cannot let you stay dirty. I cannot cleanse you._

His attention switched to the lake he stood in, it’s swirling murky depths, so different to the warm swollen African waters where he had learned to seek out the dead. He waded further into the cold water, casting amongst the weeds with his frozen hands.

_I cannot let you stay dirty. I cannot cleanse you._

Suddenly Salish was there. Strong hands gripping his neck where he was bent over the water, pulling him down. Always pulling him down. The grasp of the water forced the air out of his lungs and he felt her fingers close around his throat, tighter and closer than she had ever shown herself before. No words but instead, even in his panic, he was aware of her intent. _Push on,_ it said. _Do not stop_. Her white face, streaked with black, unlike anything he could dredge up from his memories of her in life.

The struggle was brief and then he was gasping in air above the water, cold and fatigue cracking deep in his bones. He waded out of the water and stood panting against a tree trunk, his body streaked with dirt. It was time to push his preparations for the war ahead on.

 

* * *

 

Lorna’s hand and arm shook with the weight of the pistol. She screwed her eyes up briefly then refocused on the half rotten wooden post which was semi risen out of the banks of the river on the other side from where she and James stood. The cold was starting to creep up from the mud and permeate her feet. They had been out on the foreshore for over an hour, practising shooting. Earlier James had returned to Chamber House like a storm descending from over a distant hill, crashing through the front door and looming over Lorna where she read peacefully in a chair in the murky parlour. Agitated energy sparked from him and there was no preamble into the subject he wished to discuss.

‘You will learn to shoot. Have you held a gun?’

Brace paused his building up of the fire, and stared with blatant interest.

‘Of course I haven’t James!’ She noted his muddy clothes, the strange smell of dank water and vegetation which emanated from him. She recognised the wildness in his eyes, the streaks of red pigment fading on his face.

‘I am an actress not a highwayman!’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake..’ Brace muttered from his station next to the fire, also recognising the signs of a Delaney madness. James’ attention snapped to the wiry servant.

‘You, Brace, concern yourself with this house. And the mystery of the dwindling Delaney Company brandy, hm?’

A snort was Brace's answer and the old man turned his grin towards the fire to hide it. James fixed his eyes back on the woman frowning up at him from the depths of the comfortable chair.

‘Then I will teach you Lorna. Now.’

‘At least eat first James? Wash?’

‘Now Lorna.’

And this was how she found herself on the banks of the Thames, shooting at a rotten wood post with increasing accuracy. She had initially approached the task like a petulant child. Dammit, she did not _want_ to be ankle deep in the foetid mud of the Thames when she had been so comfortable reading in front of the fire. However, as an apparent natural aptitude for hitting a target revealed itself, Lorna became enthralled.

‘Arm straight. Hold it _up_!’ James barked. ‘If your arm is not straight enough you will knock yourself unconscious with the recoil. Again!’

Lorna fired the gun once more and the remainder of the wooden stump disintegrated. She gave a triumphant whoop and turned to James, her face alight with pleasure. He briefly cupped her face and nodded.

‘Good. You are improving.’

He felt an unfamiliar flare of hope bloom, the achievement of them both a satisfaction to him: her ability to follow his instructions and improve and his ability to maintain a patient tutelage of her. Lorna leaned into his hand, savouring his touch, she had been lacking in physical closeness to him and felt its absence sharply. His approval of her was expressed minimally but was there nonetheless and she smiled to herself.

The suck and pull of the mud on her feet soon directed Lorna back to the present almost as quickly as James had turned from her and stalked back towards Chamber House.

‘We need to eat now. There is much to do,’ he called back to her.

Lorna made an exasperated sound. Dirt, death, mud and madness. The world of the Delaney's. Still she followed after him.

The chicken stew that Brace had prepared for them was mostly eaten in silence. James wolfed the food down, head bent to the bowl over the table, grimy hands no barrier to him tearing at a loaf of rough bread. Brace chuckled as he poured wine for them all.

‘He never did had manners,’ he announced to no-one in particular. Then peering mischievously at Lorna. ‘See how he treats the bread you slaved over..?’

James paused, looked between Brace and Lorna.

‘You made this?’

Lorna felt a petulance return. She nodded.

James raised his eyebrows and gestured towards the mangled loaf.

‘It’s hard.’

She felt her spine stiffen as she drew herself up.

‘As I said, I am an actress. Not a cook.’

‘Hm. You would be a better highwayman as it turns out.’

Lorna smiled approvingly at the backhanded compliment.

‘You see me as I am, James.’

After the meal, James left Chamber House once more with no explanation of where he was going, only affirming that he would return later in the evening. The ever hovering sense of foreboding that Lorna had managed to hold at bay returned to her as she sat in the quiet parlour once more. Her arm ached, a dull throb from her efforts of holding up the heavy pistol, her joints assaulted by the rebounding of the gun. Despite her pleasure at her ability to shoot well she was not unaware of the significance of James insisting she learn to do it. She found it hard to return to the pleasant state she had fooled herself into before his return and reading by the fire was not going to bring her peace tonight. Her fear at what lay ahead gnawed at her.

 

* * *

 

 

Lorna awoke as she knew she would to the low murmur of James’ voice as he crouched in front of the fire. His arms held out to the flames, almost as though in supplication. How different to that first time she had come across him like this, when the full horror and depth of strangeness and insanity in James Delaney had been presented to her as she stole into this very room. It was not that she was any less disturbed by the sight of the man, again illuminated by fire, deep within his world of visions and ghosts, chasing after god knows what kind of strange spiritual communion. But it disturbed her for a different reason – that this part of him was as lost to her now as it was then.

As before, James bowed head betrayed nothing to her of his internal thoughts. She slipped from the bed and as she approached him the muttering ceased and his head turned partially in her direction.

‘You are awake.’

‘You are filthy James.’

Lorna was motionless, even now still intimidated at times by his dark, quiet bulk. He stood up with a grunt, clothed only in his nightshirt, the inked planes of his chest and thighs caught in the firelight. He kept his back to her, leaning on the mantle and staring into the fireplace as though it contained something fascinating. But she knew his attention was now on her; a shift in the muscles of his back, his head slightly inclined to the left where she stood. She felt slightly foolish at her banal observation.

‘Hm. I am. You don’t like my ... filth?’

He cast a look at her over his shoulder.

‘I .. I don’t understand it, James. Why you do it.’

This was the most unfathomable aspect of James to her, his connection to a form of spirituality which Lorna’s mind struggled to comprehend. She was acutely aware of her dull, British sensibilities and their limits. This was the last remaining wall between them, it seemed to her.

‘There is no need for you to understand it. It’s something I do for my own reasons.’

Yet there was that still palpable feeling between them. It flowed from him and she felt the demand acutely. _You must know me_.

Lorna gestured towards the basin and pitcher of water on the chest of drawers by the bed. She felt the beginnings of mischief rise in her, tinged with the familiar adrenaline, even in the intensity of the moment. A need to diffuse, to connect with the James that did not scare her.

‘Would you like me to wash you James?’ Her voice dropped.

‘I would not like you to clean me, Lorna.’ He paused. ‘Unless you use your mouth.’ His voice was also dark and low.

James glanced at her again, noting her smothered, crooked smile. Then he turned slowly to face her, holding his arms out from his sides, punctuated by a slow shrug of his shoulders. An offering of himself to her.

‘Well?’ he murmured. ‘Do you wish to clean me. Or not?’

He watched her hand, where it rested on her crossed leg, tighten almost imperceptibly. She slowly rose from the chair and moved towards the basin on the drawers.

‘No.’ His voice was quiet but unmistakable in its finality. ‘No water.’

Lorna froze. He was testing her, she was aware of what he wanted from her and she knew she would give it freely. His eyes were on her, his strange, endless patience waiting her out. She drew her nightdress up and over her head and threw it behind her onto the bed. He nodded and pulled off his own nightshirt. His body, still streaked with dirt and pigment fascinated her as always in its singularity, its pull on her like staring at the sun. She moved closer to him and his eyes followed her as she reached for him to pull her fingers through his hair, across his lips, over the tight line of his jaw.

She pressed her lips to the faded red marks on his cheek and she saw his nostrils flare at her proximity, his eyes sliding shut. His low grunt when she finally drew her tongue down the trail of pigment sent a spear of desire sharply through her that was almost painful. Her tongue gathering the ashy chalk of the marks he had made hours earlier. Similarly she tasted the streaks on his chest and shoulders as he shifted restlessly against her touch. His hands gripped her hips and left a chalky ghost of their imprints. The grit was caught in her teeth, but also the taste of him unmistakably salty and earthy.

Now Lorna wished again she could take some of the darkness of him into herself, lighten the load, strip away his marked skin. Her body against his could only remind James he was still alive and the sight of her skin now marred with his dirt where she pressed against him did just that. His hardening cock reminded him he was alive, her soft moan as he pushed against her, grasping her arse to pull her closer, his greed for her taking him over. The kiss which contained his own grime and how their mouths and tongues shared it willingly and it only fuelled their lust. All this reminded him he was alive.

His head dropped to her nipple and when he took it into his mouth with a soft bite he left smears of the white pigment on her breast. Fingers sought her wetness and found it, the rub on her soft core was slow but insistent – he played with pressure, drawing his head back to watch her own head fall back, her mouth slacken. He marvelled at her ability to open to him.

So often she hopped ahead of him, like a bright inquisitive bird but now he held her, quivering, in his hand. And when Lorna felt she could take no more of his slow onslaught, James pulled her to the floor with him, spread her legs and pushed himself into her. Holding himself above her, her wet warmth enveloping him, James searched for her eyes in the gloom from the darkening firelight.

‘You will never be able to clean me, Lorna,’ he said simply. 

‘But I will keep trying,’ she replied, her hands reaching for his hips as her legs hooked around his thighs.


End file.
